BoxRec

Just been listening to the latest Billy Graham Podcast and he talks about this fight at length. Truly shocking (or brilliant) bit of match-making depending on your viewpoint but The Hitman came so close to losing his ‘0’ against a proper banger.

Talk about courage under fire his eye was sliced open and this kid was huge. Remember watching it at the time but just watched it again and it’s memorable for:

1 Graham eyeballing the Puerto Rican and then Ricky during the glove touch in ring centre thinking what the f**k are we gonna do with this c**t?

2 The way Hatton deals with him in R2. Absolutely nearly cuts him in half with a rib bender.

The pod if you’ve not had a listen is class by the way.

Interesting! I’d forgotten that one, although I remember that terrible cut, but yeah the size of the guy.. I imagine Frank must’ve left it to his agent over there to pick him out, because he looked dangerous - world-class left hook from Ricky to finish it.

Early career alarm bell there helping him learn how to cope, in preparation for his big test against Eammon Magee, where he had to overcome an even more shocking start to the fight,

If I remember rightly Ricky had just found out a few days before the fight he'd got a bird up the duff and was flapping a bit over that.

The tommy peacock was an early fight of his I remember. Great KO.