Sky Sports reports that Ricky “The Hitman” Hatton has retired from boxing after being stopped by former welterweight champion Vyacheslav Senchenko tonight in his hometown of Manchester.

“I needed one more fight to see if I had still got it – and I haven’t,” an emotional Hatton admitted at the post-fight press conference.

“I found out tonight it isn’t there no more. I’m a straight-shooter and I tell the truth. I can look at myself in the mirror and tell myself I did my best, but there is always an excuse to find.

“I got in the best shape I possibly could, but if I hadn’t been hit with that body shot I would have just scraped over the line with a points win and I honestly think I would still be telling you all the same thing.

“A fighter knows and I know it isn’t there any more. It’s too many hard fights, I’ve burned the candle at both ends, I’ve put my body through the mire in and out of the ring but it doesn’t matter how hard I train, I couldn’t have done any better.

“I’m a happy man tonight. I don’t feel like putting a knife to my wrists. I have got the answers I needed. I got the opportunity and I got the answers and no matter how upsetting it is, I have got to be a man and say it is the end of Ricky Hatton.”

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