Dear Ricky Hatton – please don’t do this to yourself ...Middle East

Hi Ricky, I thought I’d drop you a line. An old picture of you popped up on one of my socials, bouncing around the ring after your victory over Kostya Tszyu, one of the great nights in British boxing, the high point of your career.

And then I read you are making a comeback in December, and the milk curdled in my tea. Visions of Mike Tyson embarrassed by Jake Paul stabbed at my synapses, a great champion persuaded by the echoes of what he once was. He was going to put the imposter on his arse. Look what happened.

Oh mate, this isn’t the golf Champions Tour, where yesterday’s men strain for a 250-yard carry, or the over 50s five-a-side team, where old pros flicker, dropping a shoulder now and again to bang one past the keeper.

No one is firing back. There is no jeopardy save for putting backs out or rolling ankles. I’m thrilled that you are feeling chipper, and note the point you make on Instagram about engagement, the snap, crackle and pop of the challenge being of benefit to your mental health.

But this is not what you think it is. Damn those adrenalin highs and the utopian ends they promise. They conceal the risks, paying nil heed to the consequence of failing and the impact that might have on your wellbeing.

Yes, I have seen your posts looking sharp in the ring, shadow boxing, landing lightning combinations on imaginary foes. The choreography of boxing is never less than impressive when the feet belong to a champion.

Poor Tszyu, he never knew what hit him. He was taking lumps straight from the bell. He was an outstanding champion and hit you plenty but could not keep you off him. He quit on his stool in the end, utterly broken. That was 20 years ago and a moment of quiet satisfaction for me.

I had seen your second fight as a pro at Madison Square Garden in 1997 on the Naseem Hamed/Kevin Kelley undercard, and was struck by the front-foot aggression, always walking in, always throwing punches.

Ten years later you shared a Las Vegas ring with Floyd Mayweather Jnr, one of the greatest of all time, a genius defensively and vicious with it. You jumped all over him, caught him with a beauty straight down the pipe in the fifth. It was, I believe, your greatest performance. You went down with fists cocked, caught by a brilliant counter left. No shame in that.

I was there again two years later when you walked into peak Manny Pacquiao. You never stood a chance, and it seemed to me then, that the magnificent storm I first witnessed 12 years prior, had burnt itself out. The energy was gone.

You reached that conclusion yourself when, three years later, you entered the ring again to lose for a third and final time. I was not in attendance that night. I couldn’t see the point. Still less can I see it now.

Boxing is a terrible narcotic. Old pugs never stop being fighters. It gave them the only validation they ever knew, made them something. Remember walking down Beale Street in Memphis when Tyson fought Lennox Lewis? You were there as a fan, parading about the precinct with beer in hand, seen by everybody. “Ricky, over here, mate. Go on lad.”

Everybody loved you then. They still do. They love you for what you were and what you are, unsparingly honest, fearless, generous and funny, making light of your problems, bringing them into the light so that others would never walk alone. You are enough. You always have been. Even Mayweather knew that. You took him to the edge, made him reach for victory. Not many did that.

Afterwards you made a joke. “I was alright till I f**king slipped,” you said, those flat Manc vowels made for self-deprecation. And then Mayweather offered some advice that is even more apposite now than it was then. “Never let boxing retire you. You must retire boxing.”

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