Inside tragic boxer Ricky Hatton’s health battles after his shock death at 46: How his biggest opponents were depression, drug and alcohol abuse and suicidal thoughts

Boxer Ricky Hatton will always be remembered as one of Britain’s most inspiring fighters—both in and out of the ring. 

The 46-year-old was found dead at his home in Greater Manchester on Sunday morning. Police have confirmed that his death is not being treated as suspicious.

He leaves behind a glittering legacy both as a sportsman—which he was reprising with a highly anticipated match in Dubai at the start of December—and as a mental health campaigner. 

Over the years, the father-of-three has spoken openly about the demons which threatened to overshadow his career, sharing them in the hope that he might be able to stop other men from suffering the anguish and pain which had plagued him in his darkest moments. 

From suicidal ideation to drug and alcohol abuse, Mr Hatton made sure fans knew that sometimes your life’s biggest opponent isn’t standing in front of you in a pair of silk shorts and red gloves—they’re in your head. 

Suicidal ideation

Mr Hatton struggled with suicidal thoughts, particularly after he was knocked out by Manny Pacquiao in May 2009. 

It was the second major defeat of his career, having remained unbeaten from his first pro fight in September 1997 until he faced Floyd Mayweather in December 2007, which ended a 42-match winning streak. 

The humiliation of hitting the mat before the end of round two triggered something deep within Mr Hatton and inspired him to take early retirement from the sport he loved. 

For a year of this hiatus from the ring, he admitted that he would sit at home every evening with a razor sharp Stanley knife blade against his wrist.

In 2018, he told The Sun of his three year retirement: ‘I didn’t care if I lived or f***ing died, I really didn’t.

‘I’d come into the gym to train and the boys felt I was all right but I’d go home and sit there crying.

‘Without even a drink in me, I’d get the knife out and do it again.’

Adding to the pain of his very public defeat to Pacquiao, he became estranged from his parents—a rift which was healed just six years ago—and his trainer Billy Graham. 

He added: ‘Just seeing my dad drive past the gym would send me f***ing under.

‘It was an horrendous time. I’d sit at home and go days without talking.’ 

Mr Hatton thanked his partner at the time, Jennifer Dooley, for stopping him from going through with taking his own life. 

He told the Manchester Evening News: ‘I was near to a nervous breakdown, depression, suicidal. 

‘Most mornings my girlfriend would have to come downstairs and take a knife out of my hand. 

‘I had a knife at my wrists, I was in a really bad way, just hysterically crying for no reason.’ 

Long-term depression and low confidence

Mr Hatton told The Sun that he was sure he had been depressed since he was a child, and described having feelings of low confidence—the polar opposite of the feisty ‘Hitman’ persona he unleashed in the boxing ring. 

He told the paper: ‘I had a complex of what people thought of me—for someone that did boxing, I was very, very weak from the outset.

‘When I got successful and people started talking about me, I didn’t want anyone thinking I thought I was a “big-time Charlie”.’

He also told the MEN that ‘I was always very depressed, even when I was a youngster. 

‘And then I had loads of success at boxing and then I didn’t. First time I had my defeat, it was very hard to come to terms with.’ 

In 2012—shortly before taking on Vyacheslav Senchenko, his first fight since losing to Pacquiao—he told the Radio 5 Live that he saw himself as a ‘joke’. 

He said: ‘I feel sad because I feel ashamed of myself. 

‘It doesn’t matter how many people say, “Ricky, everyone has problems and you got beaten by Floyd) Mayweather Jnr and Pacquiao who are the two best fighters of our generation, you did the country proud’.

‘That’s very kind of people to say, but they don’t have to deal with this little fella who sits on my shoulder every day telling me that I’m a failure and I’ve let my family and my fans down and British sport, British boxing down.

‘I feel a failure and it doesn’t matter how many people say, “Don’t be too hard on yourself”, that’s how I feel and that’s how I’m coming back. I feel I’ve got to redeem myself.

‘I want people to look at me as a four-time world champion, man of the people and not look at me as this joke I feel I’ve become.’

Cocaine shame 

Hatton retired from boxing for three years after his humiliation at the hands of Pacquiao. 

During his time away from the sport, during which he grappled with depression and suicidal thoughts, he also began drinking heavily and taking drugs. 

In 2023, he told the Daily Star back in 2023: ‘I took cocaine – I never took heroin. 

‘It was in many ways it was tough times. I was taking drugs, but I think the drinking was more of a problem, and I think I was taking a line to keep me drinking.’

In 2010, a picture of him snorting a substance at a hotel in Altrincham was splashed across the front page of the News of the World. 

It prompted Hatton to admit himself to the celeb-loved psychiatric hospital The Priory. 

He later branded it a  ‘waste of time’, but was successfully treated by the team at former Arsenal captain Tony Adams’ Sports Chance rehab and therapy centre.

Alcoholism  

Hatton claimed that his drug use had one main function—to keep him on a level to enable him to drink more. 

The troubled boxer would often binge on cocaine for 36 HOURS, and struggled to estimate how much booze he would consume during this time. 

He said: ‘It would be horrific. It would be drinking from 12 in the afternoon to 4 in the morning or 6 in the morning or something like that.

‘You’re talking about 30 drinks aren’t you? That’s horrific. And you’re having the drugs so you can drink more. 

‘A normal person, you’d be finished by 1 or 2 in the morning or something like that, and you’d have a decent drink. But a few times I was going for a day-and-a-half.

‘To be honest with you, before I went on to my spirits I would do 25 pints of Guinness all day long, before the shots. 

‘And I was having bits of lines here and there to keep me going.’ 

Weight woes 

Hatton’s fighting weight was a trim 10 and a half stone, but between bouts, he would eat and drink to abandon, earning him the nickname ‘Ricky Fatton’.

In 2012, he opened up to The Guardian about his yo-yoing weight, and how doctors warned the 5″7 sportsman he was edging towards an early grave.   

He said: ‘It was criminal what I used to do to my body—drinking so much between fights and ballooning up in weight. 

‘We all laughed at Ricky Fatton but it was a miracle I got away with it so long. But I didn’t really get away with anything, did I? Life kicked my arse with a vengeance.

‘It’s obvious I was killing myself. My blood pressure was through the roof and I was 15st 6lb. 

‘My doctor said I was on the verge of a heart attack. 

‘What he didn’t know was how close, or how often, I’d already come to killing myself. I’ve had so many problems with depression, drugs, drink, the newspapers, fallouts. Every f**k-up you could make in life I did it.

“It got to a point where I didn’t care if I lived or I died. I’d been this working-class hero, this down‑to‑earth Manchester lad, who people liked so much that 25,000 of them flew to Las Vegas to watch me fight, singing: “There’s only one Ricky Hatton.” 

‘Look what they ended up with? Another f**king Ricky Hatton altogether—a drunk crying in the corner of a pub. They used to say of me: “What a fighter! What a cracking lad!” And then they saw this weeping wreck.’

From shame to advocacy   

Hatton admitted that he didn’t want his mates to view him as a ‘weirdo’, so bottled up how low he had been feeling.

He said: ‘People, when they hear you’ve got mental health issues, they think you’ve lost the plot of something.

‘For ladies, they’re more likely to share it, but for men, you can’t just tell someone, ‘Give me five minutes of your time—I want to kill myself and I’ve been crying all day.’ You don’t, do you?’

Thankfully he did eventually speak up, and he told BBC Sport that having come through the other side of his depression, he felt a duty to help others in a dark place. 

He said: ‘If a boxer can come out and say they’re struggling and crying every day, it’s going to make a huge difference.

‘Having gone through it, I now see it as my job to help those suffering with mental health.’