Campbell Hatton says stepping out of the spotlight and working hard in the gym over the past six months have helped him improve and develop his own style. 

Hatton, the son of two-weight world champion Ricky, faces Ezequiel Gregores, a late sub from Argentina, on the Conor Benn-Chris Van Heerden bill at the AO Arena in Manchester on Saturday as he looks to extend the unbeaten start to his professional career to seven fights. 

The big name gave him a flying start to his professional career, but expectations came with it. And when, in his fourth fight, against Spain’s Sonni Martinez, on the undercard of the Anthony Joshua-Oleksandr Usyk world heavyweight title fight at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last September he was booed and written off on social media. after picking up a gift of a decision. 

He received a gift of a decision, which the huge crowd booed. His career prospects were swiftly written off on social media. 

“I just deleted everything and kept away from [social media] for a while,” he said.  

“Fights like that can be the making of you because we have come away from that and realized it was a bit too much, too soon. So we went away to Spain, away from the spotlight, worked hard in the gym and put in two career-best performances on smaller shows since.” 

Boxing was never the obvious career path for Hatton and there was little encouragement from home to try it. He never saw his father box live and the first time it really dawned on him what a star the old man was came in his final fight, when he was stopped on his attempted comeback by Vyacheslav Senchenko. 

“They just let me find my path and I was drawn to it anyway,” he said. “I tried a bit of football, a bit of rugby but I was never any good at them.  

“Dad was probably just thinking I was doing the same with boxing and just giving it a go. I had always been around gyms, but I knew myself as soon as I went to an amateur gym that it was what I wanted to do and they all saw how hard I was willing to work.” 

It was the pandemic that caused Hatton to turn professional aged 20 a year ago, as amateur boxing more of less shut down and it was a case of turn professional and box, or don’t box at all. 

Despite being a trainer himself, Ricky never goes in Campbell’s corner during a fight. “I don’t know if he would be able to do it as he gets quite nervous,” Hatton said. “But I spar some of his lads sometimes, and he doesn’t let them hold back.”  

The name will not become a millstone to Hatton, though. And he will not be intimidated by his father’s achievements. 

“I think I can get to the same levels as my Dad,” he said. “It is not going to be quick and there is a lot of hard work ahead.  

“But look at Conor Benn. Early on in his career, if he would have said he would get to fight world-level operators, people would have laughed at him.  

“I will have to persevere and there will be a few tricky moments, but I will get there eventually.” 

Ron Lewis is a senior writer for BoxingScene. He was Boxing Correspondent for The Times, where he worked from 2001-2019 - covering four Olympic Games and numerous world title fights across the globe. He has written about boxing for a wide variety of publications worldwide since the 1980s.