Hit the North

Not sure if the Fall have ever written a boxing song to go along with their various football ones, but Manchester's favourite son, Ricky Hatton, fights in Las Vegas for the first time tonight against the Colombian Juan Urango. It's a long way from Tameside to Vegas, yet one can only hope that Hatton's preparation is good enough to win this one. Boxing has long lost its lustre, with too many titles, too much politics, but it remains essentially the same sport as it's always been, whatever the showbiz vagaries that surrounded it. I saw Hatton at the M.E.N. a few years ago and it was a very knowledgeable crowd, all dressed up to nines, like a convention of gangsters and their molls. The theatrics of the M.E.N. is taken straight from Vegas, of course, so I think Hatton will feel at home, though when he comes out to "Blue Moon" will the Americans realise its for his beloved Manchester City? In the week that a 60 year old Sylvester Stallone is re-selling his imaginary Rocky franchise one more time, its worth remembering that a real fight is going on across the ocean.