Irish title dream back on- Blaney reveals Ricky Hatton stopped him retiring

There is probably no one better to talk to about the negative effects that come with suffering defeat than Ricky Hatton.

‘The Hitman’ enjoyed one of the more lucrative and glittering careers of any British boxer to date and will always be revered as fight legend.

However, even he couldn’t fight off severe depression. The popular Manchester fighter has been open about how bad things got after his reverse Manny Pacquiao in 2009 and after a number of suicide attempts he has been a mental health and ‘talk’ advocate.

Considering he has Hatton as a coach Chris Blaney [11(3)-2(0)-1] will not only be advised to discuss any issues, but can do so with someone with great experience of how to get through hard times.

Granted ‘The Ginja Ninja’ hasn’t hit the heights of Hatton nor has he hit anywhere near the lows, but he has endured a difficult period since March of 2017.

Blaney suffered his first career defeat in the Last Man Standing tournament before an eye injury prevented him from putting that reverse behind him for 11 months.

The Navan fighter returned with a routine win, but then drew and lost in trade fights with Owen Joburn and Tom Stokes.

Those results, both of which Blaney argued at the time, left him feeling down and had him questioning his Irish title dream. However, some ‘wise words’ from the British fight legend put him back on track.

The Meath favourite now fights this weekend in Cork and is hoping victory will set him up for September Irish super-middleweight title tilt.

“Ricky is definitely the right person to sit you down and talk about things,” Blaney told Irish-boxing.com.

“After my last fight everyone was saying I should of won bla bla bla and I wasn’t happy. I was saying there’s no point me fighting for an Irish title if I can’t beat the last two opponents and I should just pack it in. But then after talking to the team and after some wise words from Rick, along us trying to change a few things in the way I fight I said ‘yea fuck it let’s keep going'”.

Keep going Blaney will and he fights for the fourth time this year on the Leeside Revolution card set for Neptune Stadium this weekend.

One of the tougher journey men Michal Gazdik provides the opposition, but Blaney will be favoured to defeat the fighter yet to be stopped- and if he does so he wants straight into Irish title action. 

“Camp went good really looking forward to fighting back in Ireland again,” he adds,

“This fight was suppose to be an eight rounder, but my opponent won’t do eight for some reason. I plan to get this win and then I want the the Irish middleweight title in September.
Ricky told me to get a win, get back on track and we’ll win the Irish title in September.”