The fastest mouth in boxing stayed tightly shut on Monday as Ricky Hatton peered through the fog of his concussion and saw the unwanted spectre of a future outside the ring.

No snappy one-liners. No quickfire claims to an exalted place in the pantheon of British prizefighting. Not after being rendered senseless by Manny Pacquiao and hurried to hospital for brain scans.
The Hitman who feared no man inside the ropes could not confront the reality of his high-octane career approaching its end.

Hatton had spent months in denial after his first defeat, at the hands of Floyd Mayweather Jnr. The referee that night, Joe Cortez, was tortuously rationalised as the culprit, even though Manchester’s pride and joy was outclassed en route to that knockout.

But there is no talking his way out of Saturday night’s two-round slaughter in the MGM Grand Garden Arena, so he said nothing.

Defeat is the loneliest of all the isolated places in the solitary sport of boxing but it is unusual for a leading practitioner not to emerge after a night of combat, win or lose.



Smiling again: Hatton and his fiancee Jennifer Dooley relax by the pool yesterday, a far cry from the ring where, hours earlier, Ricky lay unconscious after being hammered to the canvas by Pacquiao