Floyd Mayweather defeat left Ricky Hatton ‘too embarrassed to leave the house’

British boxing icon Ricky Hatton admitted the pain of defeat at the hands of Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather left him too “embarrassed” to “leave his own house”.

The light welterweight and welterweight world champion earned himself a titanic clash against the controversial American, after brutally dispatching Jose Luis Castillo in the fourth round in 2007. He immediately called out Mayweather, referencing the fact that he needed 12 rounds to beat the Mexican on both occasions.

Unfortunately, the adulation and support of 30,000 travelling Brits did not stop Mayweather from dealing Hatton his first ever defeat in Las Vegas. And Hatton, who is coming out of retirement to face Marco Antonio Barrera in an exhibition match next month, admitted the loss in Las Vegas left him devastated.

“When I got beat by Floyd it hit me very, very hard,” Hatton said to the Anything Goes with James English podcast. “I told all these fans I was going to go over there and do it, and I didn’t.

“I felt so down and I couldn’t leave the house, I was embarrassed. I had sportsman’s dinners booked, some appearances, this and that, I didn’t want to do any of them – so I cancelled them all.

“I didn’t want to walk down the house and when I walked down my hometown, I’d be like ‘are they laughing at me?’”

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Nobody has managed to overcome Mayweather, whose record currently stands at 50-0, in the squared circle. The likes of Canelo Alvarez and Manny Pacquiao tried to take Mayweather's crown in the years after Hatton’s bout, but both fighters found themselves on the losing side.

And Hatton said he has managed to come to terms with the defeat to Mayweather and now only looks back on the bout with pride. “I look back with so much pride because people come up to me on a weekly basis to say ‘oh Ricky, we were there for Floyd Mayweather, you couldn’t move on the strip of Vegas’,” Hatton added.

“‘They ran out of beers in the bars, we were on the waterfalls singing’ – it makes me feel so proud now.”

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