his death<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI was so shocked,\u201d he says. \u201cIt didn\u2019t feel real. It took a long while to sink in. If I was going to a show, I\u2019d think \u2018oh, Ricky might be there,\u2019 and then I\u2019d remember, \u2018no, he\u2019s gone\u2019. Still, every now and then I expect to see him somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time that 2013 holiday idea was being floated, Hatton had concluded his competitive boxing career, and Witter was nearing the end of his. He\u2019d wrap things up a year and a half later with a record of 43-8-2 (23).<\/p>\n
If Witter had found it difficult to get the fights he wanted even in his prime, he realised the breaks were even less likely to be forthcoming at 41.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still had some good upside at that stage, definitely,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d won a second British title [in 2012], against Colin Lynes; a great fighter, very good technical boxer. I won it comfortably, so I knew I still had plenty of ability.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won that, but the Frankie Gavin fight [l ud 12, November 2012] was the worst camp I\u2019d ever had. Nothing went right, nothing worked, and the desire wasn\u2019t there, the fear wasn\u2019t there. I wasn\u2019t scared of Frankie Gavin, and that\u2019s a terrible thing to happen, because you need some fear of your opponent. I just didn\u2019t perform.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter Frankie Gavin, I went to box for an EU title, definitely got robbed in that. I just thought, I\u2019m in my 40s; no one\u2019s giving me a chance. No one\u2019s given me a chance for 10 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cDom [Ingle] was saying, \u2018keep at the weight and we\u2019ll get you a last-minute fight,\u2019 and I\u2019m just like, I did that 20 years ago, and there\u2019s no way I\u2019m going to walk around 3lb above my fighting weight all the time when I haven\u2019t got a fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I just went, if something isn\u2019t pencilled in by my birthday, I\u2019ll hang them up, move on to coaching. I\u2019d been doing it for the last few years anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Witter had been helping out at the same Wincobank gym in Sheffield in which he spent his whole professional career, so it was an obvious transition once his own fighting days were over, and then led on to him setting up his own facility, Witters Boxing Club in Rotherham.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started [coaching at Wincobank] in 2014, 2015. Because by that point Brendan [Ingle] was bad; he had Alzheimer\u2019s. He went from athletic and fit to his memory started going. So, there was this guy, Andy Nice, who used to be in charge of the amateurs; he went, \u2018we need you to be a coach,\u2019 and I went, \u2018I ain\u2019t got time for that\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe badgered me for a while. He said, \u2018all the kids love you, they respect you and they all listen to you way more than they do any of us\u2019, so I went, \u2018OK, we\u2019ll figure out a way\u2019. I took it on and I became the head coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spent half my time training kids and half my time training myself. When I decided I was packing up, I thought, right, I\u2019m going to do this full-time. Then in 2018, after Brendan passed, there was a gym in Rotherham that I knew the guy who ran it. He wanted someone to take over the gym. So, I took over, repackaged it, renamed it, and it\u2019s been going ever since.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got his gym when he had five kids in there, that were it. And then within that first year, I turned it around, got more kids coming in, had a national champion, had a kid in national finals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started running a mental health class down there, some community work, grassroots stuff. It\u2019s not all about the fame, it\u2019s the grassroots stuff you get your most pleasure from \u2013 seeing people grow and improve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arguably, few boxers have grown and improved quite as much as did Junior Witter. His own career arc was that of a man with no major backing, who began boxing in the away corner and went all the way to a world championship through a combination of persistence, a few upsets and a fight-anyone mentality.<\/p>\n
That latter attribute was never more evident than when Witter boxed Zab Judah in 2000.<\/p>\n
Judah was the new IBF 140lb champion being talked about in pound-for-pound terms and had been given the chief support slot on a Mike Tyson undercard in Glasgow, when his original opponent, Jason Rowland, had to cancel after his pet dog bit off part of his finger. Witter stepped in at nine days\u2019 notice with a 15-0-2 record compiled almost entirely at six-round level to face one of the brightest stars of American boxing.<\/p>\n
Witter lost a unanimous decision but won a few rounds in a performance that was more than credible, given the circumstances. And it proved an invaluable experience, as it led him to rethink his approach and reinvent himself as \u2018The Hitter\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have enough belief in my punch power,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did think I had every chance to win if I boxed; if I hit and run, I could nick it. I thought if I stand and have a war with him, it\u2019s not looking good for me. It\u2019s not who I was at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it was who Witter would become. A run of 15 consecutive knockouts ensued, garnering British, Commonwealth and European titles, all while continually building the case for a Hatton fight.<\/p>\n
That never happened, but three further wins \u2013 all unanimous decisions \u2013 secured Witter his world title shot, which he seized with an impressive dissection of \u2018Chop Chop\u2019 Corley in London in September 2006.<\/p>\n
\u201cI boxed, controlled, even though I had so much more to give,\u201d he says. \u201cI clipped him with a shot early on and after that he never came out of his shell.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wouldn\u2019t stand and fight, which is not like him, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t. Even Mayweather would tell you that, after an aggressive Corley gave him a scare in 2004. It was perhaps Corley\u2019s performance against Witter that proved more than the result itself of how good the prime Witter was, and why he was avoided by some \u2013 including, Witter says, by Mayweather, who he fancied he had the beating of: \u201cI watched him box Emmanel Augustus [a highly unorthodox contender who gave Mayweather fits in October 2000 before losing on a ninth-round stoppage] and I thought Augustus was absolutely unreal.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I see it, he does a lot of the stuff I do, just I\u2019m better at it. I hit that bit harder, I\u2019m that bit sharper. I was confident I\u2019d beat him.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019d never find out, but Witter did score two more world title wins, including a resounding knockout of Vivian Harris, which he ranks as the best result on his record.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew he was good, I knew he was strong and he could punch. And I just thought, yes, I need that challenge. And I went out and I did it [w ko 7]. It was the performance I wanted against someone that everybody knew was dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n
That, in September 2007, might have been the ideal moment to make Witter vs Hatton, with both holding world titles and both coming off brilliant performances (Hatton had just knocked out Jose Luis Castillo). But Hatton then signed to meet Mayweather for megabucks in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Witter would lose his title in his next fight, against Timothy Bradley, and fail in a bid to regain it from Devon Alexander 15 months later. Like most fighters, he has his ways to rationalise these defeats, and the back-and-forth form that followed them.<\/p>\n
But at his peak, Witter\u2019s form spoke for itself. It\u2019s just a shame it didn\u2019t speak convincingly enough to fill the void left by the fight that never was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When we talk about Ricky Hatton, we talk too about the superstars he fought. When we talk about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-789162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789162","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=789162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}