No-one seems to know quite how many Britons have flown 7,000 miles to be in Las Vegas this weekend, but most estimates suggest it’s at least 15,000 and possibly as many as 25,000. Since no more than 4,000 of them can actually have tickets for Saturday’s fight between Ricky Hatton and Floyd Mayweather this is an invasion army of impressive proportions.
But then the British – and especially the English – have always loved their fighters and their fights and Ricky Hatton today enjoys the sort of celebrity once known by the great prize-fighters of the nineteenth century. If a spot of foreign travel can be thrown in then all to the good. Hatton’s ticketless fans have come to Vegas for some sunshine, plenty of beer and an adventure, just as their ancestors left sodden Britain for the Bay of Bengal or the Cape. Back in the Day the Boys on Tour t-shirts might have read Khartoum, Mafeking, Calcutta.
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