Boxing: Hatton fights to save Vegas

The capital of boxing is gambling that Manchester's finest fighter will be the hit attraction the strip desperately requires when he climbs into the ring on Saturday. Steve Bunce, in Nevada, assesses his potential impact

Hatton prepares for Juan Urango during a workout in Las Vegas

In the last few boxing gyms left standing in Las Vegas they call Ricky Hatton the White Mexican and he likes the name.

On Saturday night, Hatton, so long a dominant fighter and arguably the best of his generation in Britain, finally enters a ring in the jaded but still powerful capital city of boxing when he fights at the Paris casino on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Hatton is the overwhelming main attraction in his International Boxing Federation light-welterweight title fight with Colombia's wide-eyed Juan Urango. Hatton is the challenger and will clear a minimum of £1.2m. Urango, who has talked about accepting the fight to secure a financial future for his family, will enter the ring as champion and earn just over £250,000. However, the fight makes cash sense for the 26-year-old whose previous highest payday was less than £30,000.

It also makes sense on all levels for Hatton to finally land here at the age of 28 ready to skip lightly across the ring canvas where his idols, Roberto Duran and Tommy Hearns, played out their beautiful reign. It has been a long and predictable journey for the Manchester fighter and it is now looking increasingly likely that he will end his career here, fighting in the city of the men he loved to watch as a child. Hatton has admitted that he will probably never fight in Manchester again.

There is a state of crisis inside the boxing business in America and that inevitably means that Las Vegas is struggling and searching for a big player. The city's glory days as a fight venue are long gone, just like the dozen or so hotels that have been destroyed in the last 15 years.

Las Vegas was always about the heavyweights: Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. But now the sport's heavyweight division is stumbling like a punch-drunk bum from one bizarre location to another. Las Vegas is not interested in a Kazakhstan champion fighting a Japan-based Ugandan, which happened in Moscow before Christmas.

So the casino executives have turned their frail backs on the heavyweights, a division that has become weakened and comical. Hatton, who can often look like a heavyweight when he has been on the beer and the kebabs, has stepped into the void and everybody here is very interested.

However, the crisis is not limited to the big and elderly lumps currently masquerading as champions. The real problem is deeper and far more disturbing because there are no potentially big names coming through at any weight and far too many established stars are in decline.

Admittedly, there is a massive fight planned for May when Oscar De La Hoya, an idol in Las Vegas for over a decade, meets the world's finest boxer, Floyd Mayweather. The pair could split £50m but have often been booed by audiences here during fights ruled by technique at the expense of heart. It seems that the attention span of the once world famous Las Vegas boxing punter is in decline and that for their big bucks - Hatton tickets cost as much as £350 - they want action and they want it right away. Hatton will not let them down and that is something of which everybody involved with this fight is very aware. Mayweather, by the way, remains the critical name on Hatton's shopping list and his charm offensive this week is in stark contrast to the pose struck by Mayweather, who is confident, arrogant and brilliant, but not particularly pleasant.

"Nobody will ever boo Ricky Hatton," said Billy Graham, who has trained Hatton for 10 years as a professional. "Las Vegas is desperate for a fighter like Ricky. That's why they call him the White Mexican - he fights with his heart and all boxing fans like that."

Last May, Hatton fought in Boston when he switched weights and won the World Boxing Association welterweight title from Luis Collazo. The fight was screened live by HBO and 3.6 million people tuned in to watch. It is also thought that Hatton was paid nearly £2m for the fight, which is not quite in the realm of David Beckham, but remains a tidy sum for a boxing match.

While it is true that Hatton, whose business affairs are managed by his father, Ray, is earning less for meeting Urango than he cleared in his two previous fights, it is obvious that a plot or two is being artfully schemed. Hatton, you see, is just a fight away from becoming a major player in Las Vegas at a time when the sport's tarnished image is desperate for an English-speaking slugger to go into action and win back the hearts and minds of the fans. Rocky Balboa is too old but Hatton will do nicely. He is increasingly looking like the man most likely to succeed and that is why the men that run boxing in Las Vegas will not let him leave and they always get what they want.

This Saturday an audience of 7,000 is expected inside the Paris complex and there is a chance that as many as 3,000 will have made the journey from Britain. Even if only 2,000 make the trip across the Atlantic just weeks after Christmas and during a cold spell here that has frozen the lake surrounding the imitation volcano at the Mirage, it would be a staggering endorsement to the casino hierarchy of Hatton's potential.

"This is just the start. Right now we are having some fun and looking at all the options that are opening up," Hatton's American promoter, Art Pelullo, said. "I think this kid is going to take control of boxing here. The people will love him, I know my Vegas and Hatton is a Vegas fighter."

The plans appear to be well advanced for Hatton's assault and on Saturday the main supporting fight involves Mexico's Jose Luis Castillo, a former world champion at lightweight and a well-loved fighter here. Castillo, who is ranked above Hatton, has agreed in principle to meet the Manchester man in June and, behind the scenes, a cash tug of war has started between casino executives for the British fighter's services. The fight will definitely be back in Las Vegas and it is not unreasonable to imagine that Hatton will attract in excess of the 4,000 to 5,000 British fight fans that flew in for Frank Bruno against Mike Tyson in 1995.

"This is the dream that all schoolboy boxers have: I'm in Vegas, my name is all over the place and there is a 100-foot screen on the strip showing me bashing up Collazo," said Hatton. "It's better than I imagined. It's fantasy land for me."

On Tuesday, when a smiling Hatton trained at the Top Rank gym, there were five television crews from Britain and two from local channels to film his every move. Saturday's fight is turning into a very big affair for what is in reality a relatively low-key encounter with an anonymous, yet unbeaten young champion.

But, what is happening here this week has little to do with the IBF's light-welterweight title and far more to do with what the Hatton factor really means. "Right now there are a lot of offers for Ricky. I'm not ruling any of them out and I know that he is not turning his back on any proposal," said Dennis Hobson, who has been Hatton's promoter since the boxer split with Frank Warren in the summer of 2005.

Within a few hours of Hatton's public workout the local television stations were running short pieces and calling Hatton "the people's champion". Perhaps the success of Borat on the big screen or Beckham at the bank has had a favourable influence over the coverage of Hatton's arrival. There is a stark difference between the way the Americans are dealing with Hatton compared to the way they covered Bruno, Lennox Lewis or Naseem Hamed over the years. They are acting as though Hatton is here to stay and, in turn, he is saying all the right things to make them believers. In a town called Vegas that is enough.

All he has to do is win and keep winning,which is of course the dream of everybody that arrives in this city of endless promises. But in this world of the casino Hatton has an unusual and priceless advantage - the house wants him to win.