IN the garage of the gym behind the In-N-Out Burger on West Sahara Avenue, Ricky Hatton's trainer, Billy Graham, was warming to his theme.

He had spoken about how he expected Saturday night's megafight against Jose Luis Castillo to be the most punishing of Hatton's career.

"If this goes the distance," he said, "they will be 12 brutal rounds. It could be his most brutal fight but I keep seeing Ricky taking him out.

"We're covering all the bases. The way they both fight I'll be amazed if they both don't get hurt or cut somehow. I just hope the referee isn't squeamish."

He had talked, too, about how Hatton had taken too much criticism for the two off-colour performances in his most recent contests against Luis Collazo and Juan Urango. And he had said even though he was worried Hatton would be reckless in the opening rounds against Castillo to try to prove a point, his fighter had promised him he would box as well as brawl.

But then Graham, who is nicknamed the Preacher, started talking about snakes in the desert.

Not the cobra that Hatton will face in the ring at the Thomas and Mack Center. And not the low-lifes who inhabit some of the Vegas suburbs.

Graham meant real snakes in the desert. The kind he wanted to go out and catch, he said. The kind that were hiding. Too hot even for them this summer.

Turns out, you see, that Hatton's trainer is a snake-hunter with rather an eccentric taste in wildlife. He's Salford's answer to the late Steve Irwin.

And even though he has precious little spare time as Hatton's big night approaches, he's still hoping to track down a Mojave rattlesnake before he leaves town.

"I've never been snake-hunting in Vegas," Graham said. "Wherever I am I mooch around. Not just for snakes. Frogs, lizards, whatever. But I love snakes. I've caught them all over Europe but I've bought a house in Georgia in the American south, mainly because the garden's full of snakes.

"It's out in the woods where there are lots of rattlesnakes and there's a pond with snapper turtles and stuff like that.

"I've got all my catching gear down there but mostly I catch the snakes with my hands. If they're poisonous, I've got a pair of tongs.

"I've been doing it since I was seven. I've been bitten by all sorts. By lizards, frogs, snakes. The worst thing, though, was when I used to have a monkey and it bit right through my ear.

"I caught a virus once when I was cutting up a cow's heart for my dog and some of the blood got in a cut in my hand. It has affected a part of my brain so that I am deaf in my left ear."

Until recently, Graham even kept an iguana called Liston at the Betta Bodies gym in Hyde on the outskirts of Manchester, where Hatton trains.

He had to get rid of it when it became sexually frustrated and started hurling itself at the glass front of its cage.

"This town's full of snakes," he said, before he went back into the gym, "but I'm not scared of them. They're scared of me."

Graham even has reptiles for opponents. His fighter faces Castillo.