{"id":217907,"date":"2025-10-16T18:20:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T18:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/217907\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T18:20:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T18:20:11","slug":"cricket-icon-freddie-flintoffs-guilt-over-ricky-hattons-death-if-only-wed-known","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/217907\/","title":{"rendered":"Cricket icon Freddie Flintoff’s ‘guilt’ over Ricky Hatton’s death – ‘If only we’d known’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Ashes hero Freddie Flintoff has told broadcaster Piers Morgan of his ‘guilt’ over Ricky Hatton’s death. He said the boxing legend had opened up to him about his mental woes<\/p>\n

14:39, 16 Oct 2025Updated 15:44, 16 Oct 2025<\/p>\n

\"RickyRicky Hatton(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Cricket legend Freddie Flintoff has told of his \u2018guilt\u2019 over Ricky Hatton\u2019s tragic<\/a> death.<\/p>\n

The ex-England ace said Hatton had opened up to him about his mental woes during a night out together – and realised he shared some of the same feelings.<\/p>\n

But Freddie, 47, said when he last saw the boxer on a train a few weeks ago he \u2018seemed fine\u2019 and he had no inkling of the internal anguish<\/a> he must have been feeling.<\/p>\n

Hatton, 46, was found hanged at his home in Hyde, Greater Manchester on September 14, an inquest has heard.<\/p>\n

In an emotional interview Freddie told Piers Morgan Uncensored on YouTube: \u201cI sat with him a while ago on a train.<\/p>\n

\" Freddie Flintoff attending the funeral of Ricky Hatton(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cI got on a train and he’d been somewhere. We sat together all the way back up to Manchester, like, quite unexpected.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think it’s like all these things, when something like that happens and you speak and everyone says, \u2018He seemed fine\u2019, \u2018he seemed all right\u2019, \u2018he was looking forward to fighting in the next few weeks out in Dubai\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"Ricky‘The Hitman’ was preparing to return to boxing(Image: AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s almost a guilt. How people didn’t know? And the one thing I found in recent years, over the past few years, it’s happened to more and more people.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Graham Thorpe in cricket – an absolute great man, someone who is thought of so dearly by everyone who played with and everyone he\u2019s coached.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just feel like, if only we would have known. But you know it\u2019s terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freddie said Hatton\u2019s death felt \u2018quite close to home in a lot of ways\u2019. He said: \u201cRicky, one of the great men, you know.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met him years ago. We did a thing for Sky Sports and I went on the pads and he started hitting me and I was a fan as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s charming, he\u2019s funny, our careers run parallel with each other at the height, at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to his fights. We had nights out in the Press Club in Manchester and we\u2019ve sung karaoke together and I never knew all these things that he was struggling with until we sat down.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started talking, obviously, he was so honest about what he had been going through and what he felt.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then, as he was talking, I was, like, relating to it. I\u2019ve felt like that, that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been like.<\/p>\n

\"AndrewFlintoff took up boxing after his cricket career(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cThen it just turned into a chat about two blokes being really honest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose that documentary changed and I wasn\u2019t going to give as much away about myself but then felt obliged to actually if he\u2019s doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Ricky was a \u2018working class hero from Manchester who goes into the ring, he fights, all heart\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s funny. You see him like doing stand up routines at press conferences and he feels like this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then obviously what’s happened over the past two weeks, it’s been devastating.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor obviously his friends, his family but anyone who has been in contact with Ricky.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Ashes hero Freddie Flintoff has told broadcaster Piers Morgan of his ‘guilt’ over Ricky Hatton’s death. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,32109,852,105201,22416,2326,82,4718],"class_list":{"0":"post-217907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-dubai","12":"tag-family","13":"tag-freddie-flintoff","14":"tag-piers-morgan","15":"tag-ricky-hatton","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-youtube"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}