{"id":835257,"date":"2026-11-15T09:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-15T09:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/835257\/"},"modified":"2026-11-15T09:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-15T09:52:09","slug":"charity-football-match-to-honour-boxing-legend-ricky-hatton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/835257\/","title":{"rendered":"Charity football match to honour boxing legend Ricky Hatton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Team Hitman&#8217;s line up includes rapper Big Zuu, singer-songwriter, footballer and presenter Chelcee Grimes, and former England goalkeeper David James, as well as former world boxing champion Johnny Nelson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Meanwhile, Team Hatton features former City goalkeeper Joe Hart, comedian Jason Manford and WBC light-welterweight world champion Dalton Smith plus YouTuber and presenter Harry Pinero.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Former footballer Ben Mee, who grew up in Sale and came through Man City&#8217;s academy, is also in Team Hatton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mee, who met Hatton a few times, said he was honoured to be playing in the event.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He was always a kind character for fans,&#8221; he told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sounds\/play\/live\/bbc_radio_manchester\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BBC Radio Manchester<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I looked up to him growing up and he was an inspiration to me as a Mancunian lad.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hatton was a lifelong City fan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Shortly after his death the club described him as one of their &#8220;most loved and revered supporters&#8221;, going on to say: &#8220;He will always be remembered.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team Hitman&#8217;s line up includes rapper Big Zuu, singer-songwriter, footballer and presenter Chelcee Grimes, and former England goalkeeper&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-835257","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\/835257","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=835257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}