It is five months since the greatest little boozer in British boxing lost his unbeaten record and came up short against Floyd Mayweather Jr, the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world. For Ricky Hatton, the first few weeks were by far the worst. “I feel like a woman at the minute, I can’t stop crying. All that’s missing is a pair of tits. It’s going to take a while for me to get my head round [losing],” he said soon after returning from Las Vegas.

A redtop newspaper followed him to Tenerife and detailed a “titanic booze bout” lasting four days when, allegedly, “Ricky sank 57 pints, 17 vodka and Red Bulls, four vodkas, three whisky chasers, and a bottle of Moet champagne”. Remarkably, he remained standing. Back home in Manchester, rumours spread that the light-welterweight world champion could be on the verge of ending his 10-year association with trainer Billy Graham. “I’m really angry about this, it’s not true and I aim to get to the bottom of it,” Graham declared. His trainer would be in his corner for his next fight, Hatton insisted. Even on safari in South Africa he encountered trouble in the formidable shape of an eight-ton elephant that stopped a Land Rover in which he and his family were travelling in the middle of the road. “We were told not to make any sudden movements but Richard sneezed and then the tusks came into the back,” Hatton’s father, Ray, reported. “It was squeaky-bum time.” It was also the latest in a series of concerning, if sometimes comedic events that hinted at the sudden unravelling of an accomplished career.

But in Graham’s back office on Friday at the Betta Bodies gym in Denton, where Hatton has got himself back into fighting shape, he vowed he will be focused, motivated and ready for “the biggest fight of my career” against Juan Lazcano next weekend at the City of Manchester stadium. Strong and lean after ripping punches for 15 rounds into a body bag worn by Graham, he reflected on his crushing defeat at the skilled and brilliant hands of Mayweather and looked ahead to the kind of battles he can still win with the swarming aggression and physical attrition that brought him 43 consecutive victories. “A lot of people seem to forget I’m still the light-welter-weight champion of the world, I still have the belt I won the night I stopped Kostya Tszyu [in June 2005] and I’m still unbeaten in the 10st division,” he said while drinking a mug of hot tea. “These are not the last days of Ricky Hatton, not by a long way.

“I can sense people are waiting with the daggers out, ready to say Ricky has had a lot of fights and he’s not lived the life of a professional boxer and he’s more or less finished. I know there are some people who think it’s finally caught up to me, all the ballooning up and down in weight. While these people don’t necessarily want me to fall, they think I’ll never be the same fighter again and I do appreciate that the first defeat can have a devastating effect on a fighter. Look at Naseem Hamed. He had a superb career, lost one fight against Marco Antonio Barrera in Las Vegas – one of the greatest fighters of the past 20 years, by the way – and he never recovered from it. He disappeared off the face of the earth. Well, I don’t want that to happen to me.

“Financially, I don’t need to carry on because I’ve done all right, but what is all the money in the world if your reputation is someone who was done the minute you got beat? Greatness in a fighter is coming back when your back’s against the wall and everyone is expecting you to go down. I lost to the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world but I’ll be damned if I go out of boxing that way. I gave up my natural physical advantages to fight Floyd Mayweather even though that’s what sets me apart at 10st and I know I’m not able to throw people about and bully them at welterweight [10st 7lb]. I did it for the challenge and now the challenge of coming back to beat Lazcano and then to fight Paulie Malignaggi [the IBF light-welterweight titleholder from New York, who will box Lovemore N’dou on the Manchester undercard] is driving me on, that and the whispers from the critics.”

His ring entrance, he promised, will deliver an uncompromising “F*** you” message to the same critics, though he would not elaborate on the detail. The only statement that matters will need to be articulated persuasively by Hatton when the bell rings. While his impassioned and continued condemnation of the performance of referee Joe Cortez in the Mayweather fight is not without merit – clearly, the official favoured his fellow Las Vegas resident – he appears to be slightly delusional about the possibilities that a proposed rematch next year at Wembley might bring. Almost certainly, it would earn both of them considerable amounts of money. The Sky Box Office record was shattered by the 1.2m pay-per-view buys the bout generated in Britain alone, contributing substantially to Hatton’s near-£20m purse, but Mayweather’s unbeaten record was never in doubt, despite Hatton’s assertion to the contrary.

“I don’t think I was comprehensively beaten at all,” he protested. “I thought the fight was in the balance. Don’t get me wrong, I was knocked out in the 10th round and you can’t get more comprehensive than that, but it was only the last couple of rounds when it started to fall apart. Up to round six, there was nothing in it.”

Nothing except Mayweather’s supreme ring intelligence and precise, damaging punches that, simply and brutally, were too much to overcome, especially when Hatton’s aggression and efforts to smother his opponent proved largely ineffective after the first couple of rounds. A rematch could only result in more of the same, though the payment would compensate Hatton for the punishment. The pressing issue is how Hatton will look as a light-welterweight, in his natural domain once more. California-based Mexican Lazcano, a former World Boxing Council title challenger at lightweight, has campaigned as a light-welterweight for three years, losing to New York’s Vivian Harris by a narrow points decision in his most recent bout 15 months ago. Harris, subsequently, was knocked out by Junior Witter, who surrendered the WBC light- welterweight belt to Timothy Bradley from California last weekend in Nottingham, eliminating any chance he had of facing Hatton and underlining the form line for Hatton-Lazcano: the 29-year-old Hit-man is a strong favourite.

So will Hatton bounce back? “Apart from the Kostya Tszyu fight, if I top the bill at Manchester City’s ground and beat Lazcano in front of 55,000 people, go over to Madison Square Garden or Vegas and bring over another 30,000 fans and take the IBF belt, then Floyd comes over here and I beat him, that would make my next three fights my best three, wouldn’t it?” he argued, confidently. The real answer will only begin to emerge in the ring against Lazcano.

The man climbing into the ring with Ricky Hatton

- Juan Lazcano, nicknamed the Hispanic Causing Panic, has been beaten four times and stopped only once in a 42-bout career spanning 15 years

- From Mexico originally, he lives in Sacramento, California, and has boxed only once in the past 18 months, a close points defeat against former light-welterweight titleholder Vivian Harris

- Lazcano has never held a world title but his former trainer, Freddie Roach, insists that ‘Juan always makes the fi ght tough for the other guy’

- The 33-year-old says he can cause an upset. ‘You know our styles will mesh together to produce a wonderful, quality, actionfi lled fight, where anything can happen,’ he predicted.

‘It’s going to be a battle of attrition, a battle of wills and I’m looking forward to it in Manchester’

Hatton v Lazcano, Saturday, Sky Box Office, 7.30pm

Explore More Sport

• Athletics

• Boxing

• Cycling

• Sailing

• US Sport