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‘Jumping the gun’

1/ 8/2007

RICKY Hatton's father and manager has slammed the leaking of news concerning the Hitman's proposed fight against Floyd Mayweather Jnr in December.

Reports emerged last weekend that a deal had been agreed 'in principle' for Hatton to fight Mayweather in Las Vegas on December 8 after 18 months of discussions.

As the Advertiser went to press on Tuesday, Ray Hatton insisted it was a matter of agreeing to the terms of a contract sent to Hatton's lawyers on Monday evening.

They spent Tuesday examining the contents with Team Hatton looking for the contract to contain the terms agreed when both parties met recently.

Mr Hatton said: "It's gone ballistic because someone's opened their mouth before the papers and contracts were done. Everyone's telling us where it is and when it is but contracts haven't been signed.

"Someone over there (America) wanted to be smart and instead of getting everything out of the way, it's ended up with people speaking to me and me having to answer every question with 'if it happened'. People say I'm evasive but I'm saying that I haven't seen anything in black and white.

"What a lot of people don't take into consideration is the time difference between over there and here. Their office opens when ours closes, so if they send papers over at 10am, it's 6pm here and we don't see anything until the day after.

"If everything's OK, then the promoter (Golden Boy) will announce the fight is on or that both fighters will sign the contracts. They may be able to give a date but they may not be able to give the location. That's how it works, all they can do is give rough ideas based on the dates (broadcasters) HBO have got.

"They can only have one or two venues mapped out. Nobody can go around saying where it'll be because they have to see two names on a contract first."