Hitman Hatton accused of Tenerife assault

A TOURIST who visited Tenerife has claimed that British boxing legend Ricky Hatton violently assaulted him after he made a joke about the former world champion’s beloved Manchester City.

Stephen O’Hagan, a chip shop owner from Manchester, alleges that the one time welterweight champ, one of Britain’s most popular sporting stars, attacked him with two other men, breaking his jaw, eye socket, nose and wrist.

The 47-year-old told the Sun newspaper that he had watched the Manchester team beat Sunderland 2-1 on August 13 in an Irish bar on the Spanish island with Hatton, known as The Hitman in his pugilistic heyday.

After cracked an ill-timed joke at the club’s expense, O’Hagan says that Hatton and his contingent went wild and used his ‘head as a punching bag’, leaving him to recover in hospital for four days.

His wife and teenage son have corroborated the story and claim that the 37-year-old, a frequent visitor to Spain who fought an epic Las Vegas battle with Floyd Mayweather, was drunk when he launched the attack.

An agent for Hatton has said that commenting on the story was ‘inappropriate’ and the matter was ‘in the hands of lawyers’.

If the allegations are true it wouldn’t be the first time a former boxer has landed himself in trouble with the Spanish police. In 2009 former featherweight champ Scott Harrison served five months in Alhaurin de la Torre’s prison after being found guilty of assaulting a police officer outside a Costa del Sol bar.