Cry If I Want To...

 As the title implies, this is my blog, and therefore I get the sole say about content. So this is just going to be a late-night reaction to the news that Ricky Hatton has lost his comeback fight and retired.
 Non-boxing-fans can probably skip this one.
 Ricky Hatton is, by nature of his sport, a solo artist. He's not part of a team that has just lost; he takes everything, winning and losing, defeat and glory, upon his own shoulders first and foremost.
 Whilst any solo athlete (tennis players, snooker players, track and field athletes of all shades) can lay claim to this honour-cum-burden, almost nobody can lay claim to have captured the public imagination like Ricky Hatton.
 Few athletes, if any, have become so loved by the people. And it is precisely because Hatton has always been a man OF the people that he is so beloved. A humble, likeable everyman with an extraordinary gift who fell on hard times as his glory days deserted him, he was both a superman under the limelight, and all too human once it faded.
 Many decried his decision to return to the ring after a four year absence - an absence plagued by depression, desolation and drug problems. Personally, I didn't think this return was necessarily wise, but I understood it completely.
 Jerry Boyd, the great cut-man who wrote "Million Dollar Baby," prefaced his second and final book with a quote from the Illiad. Hector, knowing that his death at the hands of Achilles has been foretold, prays only that he can have some measure of glory before his end. "Let me not die without doing some great thing that men shall talk of hereafter," he implores. The same line becomes the preface to Boyd's book.
 This burning desire to be more than nothing is what forges athletes, and fighters in particular. For all of his telegraphed punches and hackneyed sequels, Stallone understood it perfectly in "Rocky." Having seen the venue for his improbable fight against impossible odds, Rocky, crushed under the weight of reality, returns home to bed and stares into space as he tells his wife that he cannot possibly win. That he knows the task ahead of him is beyond his means.
 "But you've worked so hard," she protests.
 "That don't matter," he shrugs, "It really don't matter if I lose this fight. It don't matter if this guy opens my head, 'cause all I wanna do is go the distance."
 That desire to prove self worth is what has driven many fighters. To prove, as Rocky put it, that someone "wasn't just another bum from the neighborhood" drives many young men into gyms, and many young men into fights, both sanctioned and illegal. The need to fight for one's own dignity is a universal constant of the human psyche, from professional athletes to suicide bombers.
 It is what drove Hatton to put his crippling depression and substance problems behind him, to shed his bloated frame and return. He would rather have died on his feet than in a drug-addled daze. Rather meet his end in a fight than in his bed.
 He lost, of course.
 Miracles are so rare, and time so unforgiving, that there was little chance for an over-the-hill fighter to come back and make history.
 Hatton's loss hurts the fans who love him more deeply than any football team's failure, more than any blip in the history of an endless saga. He takes his defeats alone, and yet we, as fans, feel the pain with him. We wanted to believe the impossible. We wanted to see hope overcome the odds. We wanted to believe, just once, that a man could conquer his demons and return as good as new; that the past could be re-written. We wanted to watch, as a champion of the people, like Scrooge, sponged out the writing on the stone of time.
 He can, of course.
 Hatton's career might be over, but the very fact that he could even return to the ring after becoming the bloated mess he once was proves that the human spirit can overcome enormous odds.
 With his fighting days behind him, he could still become one of the all-time great trainers. Any young man in the country would crawl over broken glass to train with a legend of his stature.
 Sure, we didn't get the fairytale ending. We didn't get the improbable pay-off where Ricky becomes champion and the recession ends and we all walk off into the sunset with a supermodel, because this is real life. And in real life, you can't beat the odds. But you can, as Ricky Hatton proved, beat your demons. You can beat your past. And you can make a future, if you're smart enough and tough enough.
 I really hope he knows this, but I think he does. I think he's given his all and can walk away knowing that he did so, and maybe forge a future full of hope.
 Ricky Hatton is one of the most loved fighters in British history. He deserves to win in life, even if he lost tonight.