Yes, Britain's got talent, though judging from recent TV offerings of performing dogs and rain dancers there is more of it in sport than showbiz. It may have gone unnoticed that across the globe in recent weeks young Brits have been cleaning up the medals in sports as diverse as taekwondo and triathlon, modern pentathlon and BMX biking, canoeing, diving and gymnastics. The latest big hit came last week when the welterweight boxer Bradley Saunders, already a World Championship bronze medallist and one of Britain's eight Olympic qualifiers, won the gold medal in the prestigious President's Cup in Taiwan, defeating the Olympic champion in the process. Few British prospects have made as big a splash as phenomenal water babe Tom Daley, of course, but such is the current rate of achievement in the less glamorous Olympic sports – which is where most of the medals will come from – that it all bodes well for Beijing, but more so for 2012. The one fear about the upcoming Games is that some prospects may be peaking too early, as has happened in the past. But at least there is firm evidence of star quality in the class of 2008.

In a week when David Haye brought a new dimension to self-promotion while Ricky Hatton plumbed new depths of self-delusion, the Hayemaker and the Hitman highlighted the vicissitudes of big-time boxing.

Forget 55,000 people, forget the millions made and forget the 43 wins because tonight at the City of Manchester Stadium Ricky Hatton is fighting for something far more elusive than the facts and figures that so neatly explain the boxing business.

Thankfully Henmania is no more at Wimbledon, but Hitmania will take over in Manchester next Saturday night. A crowd of 55,000, the biggest for a boxing event in post-war Britain, will celebrate the homecoming of sport's favourite cheeky chappy, Ricky Hatton, at his beloved football shrine.

Junior Witter became the fourth of Britain's clutch of world champions to lose his title this year, suffering a shock defeat at the fast hands of young Timothy Bradley from California, known as The Desert Storm.

Junior Witter defends his World Boxing Council light welterweight title in Nottingham tonight when he takes on Timothy Bradley. It is the third time he has defended the title and is annoyed that he is not recognised as an equal to Ricky Hatton.

Undefeated for 18 years, the super-middleweight champion of the world is facing a big fight for the first time away from British soil – and Bernard Hopkins is not alone in believing that could count against him

Clinton Woods, who likes to be known as the Cinderella man of British boxing, continues to ride in the golden coach he climbed aboard three years ago when he acquired the International Boxing Federation world light-heavyweight title. In the early hours of next Sunday he finally goes to the ball in Tampa, Florida, meeting ex-champion Antonio Tarver in the second of a trilogy of mega-dollar match-ups featuring Britons invading US rings.

Gavin Rees has Amir Khan on his mind as he prepares to defend his WBA light-welterweight title for the first time against Andreas Kotelnik, the Ukrainian, in Cardiff tonight. The Welshman became one of British boxing's most unlikely world champions when he emerged from a career seemingly destined for undercards to dethrone Souleymane M'baye on points last July.

Ricky Hatton will return to the ring at the home of his beloved Manchester City on 24 May when he defends his International Boxing Organisation light-welterweight title against Mexico's Juan Lazcano. It will be the first fight for Hatton since his defeat in Las Vegas last December at the fists of Floyd Mayweather and it will be his first fight in Manchester for three years.

From boxing hares to butterflies, there's plenty to see during the colder months – if you know where to look

The Hitman may have hit the deck, but 2007 was the year in which British boxing hit the heights. The battered old game's comeback anticlimaxed when Ricky Hatton ran into a reality check in Las Vegas, but otherwise it was a prodigious 12 months which produced a record seven world champions, one of them Joe Calzaghe, voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, while the coach of the year just happens to be his dad.

Scotland's Alex Arthur, who aspires to be Britain's eighth world champion next year, almost had his dream dashed in his home town of Edinburgh last night, coming perilously close to losing his WBO Interim super-heavyweight belt at the hands of Stephen Foster Jnr.

Ricky Hatton, Britain's greatest-ever boxer in the eyes of many who know about these things, might be even more of a national hero if his fights were on one of the terrestrial stations, but they'd find it difficult to match the commitment shown by Sky. There, sport doesn't have to compete with endless hours of Quiz Play or prime-time repeats of One Foot in the Grave.