{"id":218751,"date":"2025-10-22T21:18:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/218751\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T21:18:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:18:13","slug":"boxing-among-the-richest-sports-so-wheres-the-help-for-old-fighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/218751\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxing among the richest sports \u2014 so where\u2019s the help for old fighters?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jimmy Batten has lived many lives. He was the British light-middleweight champion who went the distance with Roberto Dur\u00e1n, despite pre-bout warnings of brain damage. He was the boy whose infamous uncle was jailed after helping to wrap the body of the Krays\u2019 victim Jack \u201cThe Hat\u201d McVitie in an eiderdown and putting it in the back of a car. <\/p>\n

After boxing he was a bouncer, singer and actor in The Bill and, ironically, Straker in the Nineties film The Krays. A CD of his pure crooner\u2019s voice echoes around a one-bedroom flat close to the Dartford Crossing: \u201cYesterday is dead and gone, tomorrow\u2019s out of sight.\u201d Help Me Make It Through The Night is still Jimmy\u2019s song.<\/p>\n

Now 69, Batten was diagnosed with Parkinson\u2019s eight years ago and has had dementia for the past four. He enjoys a dementia singing group and speaks in a hushed whisper, eyes lighting up as he rewinds past hard-to-find days to Dur\u00e1n, meeting Muhammad Ali and domestic scraps with Albert Hillman, Tony Poole and Larry Paul.<\/p>\n

\"Jimmy<\/p>\n

Batten in his prime as a young light middleweight and, below, at his south London home this week. The 69-year-old was diagnosed with Parkinson\u2019s eight years ago and has had dementia for the past four<\/p>\n

THE TIMES<\/p>\n

\"Jimmy<\/p>\n

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND<\/p>\n

Batten and his partner, Jackie Harsant, are long-term supporters of the Ringside Charitable Trust, a small grant-giving and support organisation with a helpline manned by old boxers with the overarching aim of setting up a 36-bed care home for former fighters. Usually, Ringside toils away quietly, making piecemeal progress to little fanfare, but since the death of Ricky Hatton<\/a>, the phone has been ringing a lot. Suddenly, the question of how to help old boxers with both physical and mental traumas is topical.<\/p>\n

Dave Harris, a boxing man who used to work in social services, heads Ringside. In six years, they have raised about \u00a3300,000 and counselled hundreds of boxers, but they are miles away from the \u00a31.5million they say they need to run a home for a single year. By contrast, the Injured Jockeys Fund, which relies entirely on donations and investment income to help past and present riders, has paid out \u00a322million in grants since 1964 and set up three state-of-the-art rehabilitation centres.<\/p>\n

Saudi money is inflating purses at the very top of boxing, but the trickle-down effect is a drought. Harris says: \u201cWe\u2019ve had money quite often from ex-pros paying their \u00a35 a month to get a home opened, but I get relatives of fighters with pugilistic dementia telling me it\u2019s ridiculous they can\u2019t get any respite care or support other than from Ringside. I say, \u2018Well, it\u2019s not like we haven\u2019t tried.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jimmy<\/p>\n

Batten took Dur\u00e1n the distance in Miami in 1982 in a bout for which he received \u00a35,000. Despite the Londoner holding his arms aloft, his illustrious opponent was given the unanimous points verdict<\/p>\n

FOCUS ON SPORT\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

One man who did offer to help was Hatton himself. When he had an exhibition bout with Marco Antonio Barrera in 2022, he offered a percentage of his take, but Harris felt that, given the age of the fortysomething fighters, he could not morally accept it. \u201cI thought, \u2018What if something goes wrong?\u2019 But God bless his heart.\u201d Not long before he took his own life, Hatton got a lift with one of Ringside\u2019s stalwarts from an old boxers\u2019 function, and again said that he wanted to help.<\/p>\n

By the River Thames, Batten tells me his Parkinson\u2019s is a result of boxing, but he does not blame his profession. \u201cI wanted to be a footballer, in the middle, but I\u2019d do it all again,\u201d he says. A born fighter, Jackie says he once dubbed an old acquaintance Dave the Coat-hanger, \u201cbecause he\u2019d say \u2018hold my coat\u2019 every time he went to have a fight\u201d. Jimmy smiles. \u201cJackie\u2019s my sparring partner now.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is hard, though. \u201cEverything\u2019s getting worse,\u201d Jackie says. \u201cThere\u2019s been a few falls. I\u2019ve got to have an operation soon and I\u2019ve got to find respite care somewhere. If they had a home, it would be great. They\u2019d all be in there talking about boxing, bringing back memories. What\u2019s he going to talk about if he goes somewhere else?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Certificate<\/p>\n

Millwall-born Batten, who embarked on a career in singing and acting after his retirement from the ring, was inducted into British Boxing\u2019s Hall of Fame in 2022<\/p>\n

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND TIMES<\/p>\n

He likes to talk about Dur\u00e1n. A year before the four-weight world champion fought Marvin Hagler in a Vegas mega-bout, he faced Batten in Miami in 1982. Incredibly, Batten had already been warned about brain damage. He broke three ribs in the fight but gave Dur\u00e1n a fright, although Batten says a deal had been done. \u201cI\u2019d been told I could not win before,\u201d he says. He lost on points and was paid \u00a35,000.<\/p>\n

Old boxers do not suffer in a homogeneous way, but the risk of permanent brain damage is irrefutable. Way back in 1970, parliament debated a Royal College of Physicians report that stated 47 per cent of boxers who had fought professionally for ten years showed signs of brain damage. Others struggle without the buzz of fight night, the purpose of training or the loss of lifestyle.<\/p>\n

Paulie Malignaggi, 44, is a former IBF world champion who won a bare-knuckle fight in the Leeds First Direct Arena on Saturday. Many will see his new venture as the trope of the old pro forced to come back, but the Italian American, fighting partly because he wants to move to Sicily, is good at articulating the problems of a fading spotlight. In Tris Dixon\u2019s brilliant study Damage; the untold story of brain trauma in boxing, Malignaggi posited that depression and personality changes could be down to physical blows rather than the comedown of sporting afterlife.<\/p>\n

Beaten by Hatton in Vegas in 2008, he tells me: \u201cBoxers often come to it from a bad place in their life. Even if you\u2019re middle-class, there\u2019s something perturbing you that boxing fixes. When it\u2019s gone, this crazy therapy is taken away from you, and you see fighters fall into these downward spirals. <\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely think more could be done in boxing, and life in general, with mental health, but I say that with an asterisk because we live in a time when victimhood is praised and a lot of people hog the help. Sometimes the ones who severely need the help don\u2019t get it. Someone like Ricky would mention it here and there but would rarely complain. I don\u2019t know how you get help to people who really need it. A lot of the time people are too proud to ask for it and that\u2019s where they get hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Hatton\u2019s death threw into sharp focus the lack of dedicated help available to veterans of a brutal sport<\/p>\n

DOMINIC LIPINSKI\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Malignaggi says he used to be \u201ca prick\u201d who would trash-talk opponents to fuel his fire, but he could not dislike Hatton. Indeed, Hatton would often get him tickets for Manchester football matches and offered to close his gym so Malignaggi could train for this month\u2019s bare-knuckle bout. \u201cThe thing I regret is coming to the UK and thinking I should call him up, but then telling myself, \u2018He\u2019s Ricky Hatton, he\u2019ll be too busy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Queensberry promoter Frank Warren, who knows more about boxing and mental health than most, agrees with Malignaggi. \u201cYou can\u2019t force someone to sit there and bare their soul and talk about their demons,\u201d he says. \u201cThey have to want to go through the process, and just because you\u2019ve got money, it doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re going to. My brother committed suicide. I don\u2019t need anyone to tell me about what should be done because I should have been a bit more there for him. I was always too busy, and I think about that a lot. But how I choose to donate money is my choice.\u201d <\/p>\n

Warren has helped to raise over \u00a310million for DEBRA, a research charity and support organisation for sufferers of a genetic skin disorder. \u201cAnd we put a million quid into BoxWise, which has done more for knife crime through boxing than any other charity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris sometimes wonders whether there is \u201ca boxing family\u201d any more, and Warren recalls how people did not dig deep when MRI scans were introduced after the deaths of James Murray and Bradley Stone 30 years ago. \u201cDo you know how many people in the whole of boxing put money in? Two,\u201d he says. \u201cOne trainer put in \u00a31,000 and I paid for every boxer in the country to have an MRI scan because you can\u2019t say someone\u2019s brain is deteriorating if you haven\u2019t got a base to go from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever anyone thinks about boxing, it is not going anywhere, so who can help? There is no world governing body like Fifa to take a lead, but one sanctioning organisation, the WBC, has its own mental health outreach programme and has a hardship fund that has dispensed more than $2.5million (about \u00a31.9million) for things such as medical emergencies and funerals. <\/p>\n

It is now planning to offer boxers expert investment advice through one of six companies. Its president, Mauricio Sulaim\u00e1n, says: \u201cWhen they make money, the last thing fighters want to do is save or invest. They don\u2019t even want to pay sanction fees. It\u2019s a huge problem and the more money they make, the more problematic it is.\u201d Hence, the WBC will pilot a scheme next year where fighters must show they have a retirement plan.<\/p>\n

Yet there is still a helpline adviser at Ringside who had to buy a tent out of his own pocket to help a homeless fighter, and with the former IBF world champion James DeGale, another to go bare-knuckle boxing, there are fears that combat sports are becoming more reckless, although Malignaggi claims no gloves and fragile hands mean there are fewer concussive combinations. \u201cWe are trying to make boxing safer, and you see bare-knuckle boxing, slapping competitions,\u201d Sulaim\u00e1n says. \u201cIt\u2019s barbaric, beyond belief. All these different variations are only to feed the bloodlust of the current society. It\u2019s boxing 120 years ago. How can governments allow this?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dana White, the UFC chief now involved in boxing, has been talking of having a smaller ring to encourage more blows. \u201cI look at these people and they know f*** all about boxing,\u201d Warren says. \u201cThey don\u2019t know what a boxer goes through.\u201d<\/p>\n

It may well be that Ricky Hatton would have had his struggles in any life. Perhaps Jimmy Batten would have suffered from the neurodegenerative disease CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) had he pursued life as a Millwall footballer. In his flat by the Thames, his CD is still playing. <\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday is dead and gone,\u201d a younger Jimmy sings, and if it lives on in the pictures on the wall, a still from the Dur\u00e1n bout there and the Freedom of London certificate here, it still seems all too easy to be forgotten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jimmy Batten has lived many lives. He was the British light-middleweight champion who went the distance with Roberto…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-218751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218751","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=218751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}