For years they were a double act, the hungry fighter and the wily, gruff trainer. But all good things come to an end. Billy Graham will be in town for Ricky Hatton’s bout with Paulie Malignaggi at the MGM Grand on Saturday, but they will not be in the corner together and are unlikely even to be in the same building on fight night.

Graham had been Hatton’s trainer since he turned professional as an 18-year-old. But they parted after Hatton’s win over Juan Lazcano in May, the boxer’s camp saying that Graham had retired, the trainer saying he had been sacked. It is understood that they have not spoken since. Graham said he wanted to come to Las Vegas to say goodbye to the fans, but his presence appears to be a cause of tension.

While Hatton addressed the media on Monday evening, Graham cut an isolated figure in a bar elsewhere in the MGM Grand. “I felt that I had to be here because Ricky is my man,” Graham, who said that he would watch the bout on television in a bar, said. “I needed to do this to move on. I needed to lay ghosts to rest.”

Hatton, 30, said: “He says he wants to come to the fight, but he’s not actually coming to the fight. You’d think he’s come over because he wants to watch me fight. But he just seems to have come over to come over. It’s not a distraction.”

Floyd Mayweather Sr, the estranged father of Floyd Jr, who inflicted Hatton’s only defeat at the same venue last December, is now training Hatton and the boxer, who will be defending his IBO and Ring magazine light-welterweight titles, says he is getting the attention from Mayweather Sr that he has lacked in recent times.

“When I am skipping, Floyd is stood there; when I am shadow boxing, he is stood there; when I am on the punchbag, he is holding it; when I am up at 5.30am to go running, he is in the car alongside me,” Hatton said. “No disrespect to Billy but I have not had that for two or three years.

“I think my past couple of performances showed that I was not getting that hands-on attention. Nobody trained or worked harder than me and Billy G in that gym. Billy’s reputation was to get his fighters in wonderful condition, it was technically where I was suffering. The Mayweather fight was not a great performance by any means. There was not much method to my madness and the Lazcano fight was not much better."

After the loss to Mayweather, Hatton vowed to stick by Graham, but the doubts had been planted. “There was not a massive amount of thought to what I was doing,” Hatton said. “You’ve seen me use my jab, you’ve seen me move off to the side, you’ve seen me use angles and set up attacks. Did you see that against Castillo, or Mayweather or Lazcano? You didn’t. If you’re not doing it in the gym, you are not going to do it in the ring.”

Graham received painkilling injections in his hands to enable him to get through training camps, but Hatton said that the trainer still required regular breaks. “It’s not Billy’s fault,” Hatton said. “The injuries were such that he was saying he had to go away on holiday to rest and it was seven weeks out from a fight. If his injuries were bad, he had days off or easy days because of having injections in his hand.

“Billy’s record speaks for itself. I have had some wonderful times. We achieved together, so much more than people thought we could five years ago. We had some happy times in the Phoenix camp with the family atmosphere. But gradually one by one the other boys left and I was the last man standing. It was harder for me to leave because Billy was more than just my coach. It was a close friendship.”

While Las Vegas is not bracing itself for an invasion like the one in which an estimated 30,000 Brits arrived for the Mayweather bout, several thousand are expected to converge on the Strip. Apart from the loss, Hatton said that his worst moment of that trip was when he found out that his fans had booed the US National Anthem.

“I was in the changing-room and couldn’t see anything, but when I watched the video I nearly fell off the settee,” he said. “If anyone boos the National Anthem at home it’s a football thing and we’re used to it. They are not used to it over here. They are a very patriotic nation. I have the best fans in the world, but I would say to them, please show respect.”