The former champ was nominated for the documentary of his boxing life, but had some thoughts on the sport's current stars. Report by Nelsonj. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 Ricky the Hitman Atton, pleasure to meet you mate.
00:03 Pleasure to meet you indeed.
00:04 I'm from Preston so you're still...
00:06 Yeah, a lot of love from us, yeah.
00:08 Still a lot of northern love for you mate.
00:09 I was actually, I remember watching the Mayweather fight in the SU at uni all those years ago.
00:15 We stayed up for it.
00:17 Good times, but not that fight.
00:19 Robbery, absolute robbery if you ask me.
00:21 Anyway, I also caught up with your documentary in the last couple of months.
00:27 I stayed up one night and watched it. Fantastic piece of filmmaking.
00:30 Yeah, I got some fantastic feedback from it to be honest with you.
00:33 It's, from my own personal, it was nice to go through all the more times and go through it again.
00:39 But there was some bad times along the way, which is well documented, but to come out the other end,
00:46 a lot of people found it very, very inspiring.
00:48 What's it like to sort of bear all like that?
00:51 Because when you're in the public eye, there's a certain amount of yourself you have to give to the public anyway,
00:55 especially these days with social media and all that kind of palaver, it's expected.
01:00 But to do something like that when you have to open up your past, your innermost demons,
01:05 the things that you're proud of as well as the things that haven't been,
01:07 how difficult a process was it? Or did you actually find it quite freeing?
01:11 I didn't find it hard to do that to be honest.
01:14 I think the reason why I had such a big fan base was I've always been honest, I've been open,
01:19 I've never shied away from anything.
01:21 I think that's why people like me.
01:24 There were some really, really bad times in my life a few years back and I nearly wasn't here to enjoy days such as this.
01:31 And to get the feedback, people say, "Oh, Ricky, I'm struggling with my mental health and I feel this and feel that,
01:37 and I saw your documentary and it made me, it picked me up."
01:42 So it's not just a reliving the good times, it's nice that it's been able to help people.
01:50 And it's brought you here to the BAFTA TV Awards, which is a celebration of British TV and British industry.
01:56 Is there anything in particular you've been watching this year, like comedies and dramas or anything that you've been excited about?
02:01 Not particularly, to be honest with you. I'm that busy now, I don't get much time to watch the telly.
02:06 But just to be here at an event like this, it just shows what a job Noah Meadie did on my documentary, to be honest with you.
02:16 I'm not expecting to win anything, but I'm so proud of the job, what they did on my documentary.
02:22 And if it is beaten, then I'd shake them by the hand because I thought mine was...
02:29 It brought a tear to my eye to watch it, yeah.
02:31 Well, sticking with sport then, two big things happening in the world right now.
02:34 You've got Tyson Fury, who's obviously fighting Usyk in just a week.
02:40 Where are your thoughts on that at the moment?
02:43 Because early doors, it felt like people going, oh yeah, Tyson's going to have this.
02:47 Then it felt like people, the public was swaying towards Usyk.
02:51 Who do you think is going to come on top in that fight?
02:54 I'm still going to go with Tyson. I think I've known Tyson a while now and I think he definitely took Nganu lately, the last opponent.
03:04 So I think he'll be better this time. I think he looks in fantastic shape already.
03:11 And I think coming off that poor performance last time, I think it's a bad thing for Alexander Usyk, to be honest with you.
03:19 You know what I mean? Tyson, you know, will probably be a bit embarrassed about his last performance.
03:23 So he's put everything right. He's not doing as much.
03:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
03:27 He's not knocking us out. So it seems like he's proper knuckling down and taking this one serious, to be honest.
03:31 And he should be, to be honest with you.
03:33 You know, because fighters like Usyk only come along once in a while.
03:37 You know what I mean? Undisputed cruiserweight champion, undisputed heavyweight champion, Olympic gold medalist.
03:45 You know what I mean? So he's a technician and he's smaller and he's faster.
03:49 And he's the type of style of opponent that Tyson's not had to deal with for some time, which will make it all good.
03:54 But I think Tyson Fiore at his best, Peter Usyk at his best.
03:59 Yeah, I actually find between Tyson and Anthony Joshua in recent months and the last couple of years,
04:05 they both went a little bit quieter when they were prepping for a big fight.
04:08 And you're thinking, is it because their head's in it or the head's gone?
04:11 And then Joshua has come out and he's so much better than we seemed 18 months ago.
04:15 And you're expecting maybe the same from Tyson.
04:17 I think it's because the head's in it, to be honest with you.
04:20 Do you know what I mean? When the big fights come over.
04:23 And sometimes you need a little bit of a bad performance.
04:26 We can't perform great every time, to be honest with you.
04:28 And AJ's had a couple of performances.
04:31 Everyone thought he wasn't quite the fighter he was.
04:33 And he's come back looking better now than he's ever done.
04:36 So that'll be a good one.
04:38 Hopefully, you know, after the Usyk-Tyson fight, then AJ can get it on the media.
04:43 Please God, you know, for boxing fight fans. We've been waiting for it.
04:47 Eight years for Tyson versus AJ.
04:50 You could say at least your generation, the top fighters did face off against each other,
04:54 where it seems like there's so much behind the scenes now that have been keeping these guys apart for so long.
04:58 You've got to be careful now, you know, because we're in this social media world, aren't we?
05:02 Where, you know, everyone's talking crap, you know, and this and that.
05:06 And they'll say something controversial to get a like or a retweet or this or that.
05:10 That was not the world I come from. Do you know what I mean?
05:12 So it is. And sometimes I think with the first fight,
05:16 Tyson's last fight being in Saudi, you know, it was a big, massive event and everything like that.
05:21 And I think he just forgot what he was there for, Tyson, to be honest.
05:26 The event was that big. I think he took his eye off the ball a little bit, you know.
05:29 Sometimes you can get carried away with the social media side of things, can't you?
05:32 And I think that's what Tyson did for that one. So I think he'll come back stronger.
05:36 Not to dwell on it too long, because we are here with the batters,
05:38 but just wondering your thoughts on all these fights that seem to be happening in Saudi Arabia nowadays.
05:44 It's a fantastic spectacle on TV, but it also feels like we're seeing these top fights being fought in front of relatively small crowds.
05:51 The atmosphere isn't quite the same. I know the money's there,
05:54 but do you think there needs to be a bit of a rebalancing in boxing at the moment?
05:57 Yeah, the Saudis, you know, he's an absolute avid boxing fan, to be honest with you.
06:02 So I think the right people said to him, listen, we can't have Tyson Joshua versus Tyson Fiore in Saudi Arabia.
06:10 Come on, no disrespect. I mean, he's doing a great job, you know,
06:13 because he's throwing his money into that and these big fights are happening now.
06:16 So, you know, you can't fault him. But, you know, listen,
06:20 you know, that's going to be one of the biggest British fights,
06:22 the biggest British fight in history needs to be in Britain.