{"id":140708,"date":"2025-09-16T08:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T08:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/140708\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T08:04:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T08:04:08","slug":"ricky-hatton-eamonn-magee-lifts-lid-on-his-rivalry-turned-friendship-with-superstar-he-was-a-character","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/140708\/","title":{"rendered":"Ricky Hatton: Eamonn Magee lifts lid on his rivalry-turned-friendship with superstar: \u2018He was a character\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom4 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft5 beltel-1d70522a_marginright5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Eamonn Magee recalls the night a taxi trip to Ardoyne turned into a bumper night for a local pub as word spread that Hatton was in the building\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ricky Hatton with Eamonn Magee in 2013\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/29fea9ea-da60-4bed-b140-e0f030777d83.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft5 beltel-1d70522a_marginright5 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Ricky Hatton with Eamonn Magee in 2013<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ricky Hatton once described Eamonn Magee as a \u201cf***ing w*****\u201d after the Belfast boxer became the first fighter to ever put \u2018the Hitman\u2019 down in a 2002 sellout bout dubbed \u2018Anarchy in the UK\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">But later, outside of the ring, the two became close friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eamonn Magee recalls the night a taxi trip to Ardoyne turned into a bumper night for a local&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1334,2560,11484,28863,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-140708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-belfast","9":"tag-boxing","10":"tag-niamh-campbell","11":"tag-north-belfast-news","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}