Burnett to Push Hatton’s Fighting Weight in Gruelling Belfast Marathon Tribute
Ryan Burnett won’t just have Ricky Hatton on his mind when he runs the Belfast Marathon in May.
The former unified world champion will effectively have the fighting weight of the British Boxing legend on his back.
The Belfast star took the passing of Hatton, who was his coach and mentor during the early part of his career, very hard and had a burning desire to do something to celebrate and pay homage to ‘The Hitman’.
The marathon seemed a good choice, but not difficult enough, so the former world champion will do the endurance race while pushing a cart that weighs 63.5kg, the weight Hatton came in at when he won his first world title, by stopping Kostya Tszyu.
“I just had this overwhelming thing that I wanted to do something,” Burnett said when speaking to BoxingScene.
“I didn’t know what but then it popped into mind, ‘I’ll do the Belfast Marathon.’ And me thinking, ‘what’s going to be really, really hard’ I thought, ‘What if I pushed the weight Ricky weighed when he won the title, that would be really, really hard.
’”Burnett, who is now a pro coach himself, hopes to raise both money and awareness for both the Ricky Hatton Foundation and TAMHI.
