by David P. Greisman
I was a fan of Arturo Gatti back when I could still be a fan of a fighter, back before I was a writer, back when it was just my father and I bonding over boxing on Saturday nights.
I’d often return home from work to find the television tuned to HBO, the undercard already under way. Many of those evenings I’d acquiesce to exhaustion in the middle of the action, “just resting my eyes,” I’d say, submitting to unconsciousness on the couch some time before a boxer would do the same on the canvas.
Not when Arturo Gatti fought.
I had to stay awake – not that you could do anything but keep your eyes open, and your mouth, too. His skin swelled. His flesh bruised. His eyebrows cut. His knees shook. And his punches somehow kept coming.
He was an action hero.
He wasn’t an invincible Arnold Schwarzenegger, nor was he an ass kicking, wise cracking Steven Seagal or Jean Claude Van Damme. Rather, he resembled Bruce Willis as John McClane or Sylvester Stallone as Rocky. There was no doubt that he would take a beating. And there was no doubt that he’d find a way to still be standing.
But it was hard to watch when the action became more one-sided, when the beatings got worse, and when it wasn’t just skin swelling, flesh bruising, eyebrows cutting and knees shaking. It was hard to watch when it was also his body succumbing, when his punches were no longer coming and he no longer could find a way to remain upright.
And so it was better when the final credits rolled on our action move, when the Human Highlight Reel looked at the camera, waved, and said “Hasta la vista, baby.” There he was, minutes after another devastating defeat, quoting the Terminator.
“I can’t be taking this abuse no more,” he had said. It was a bittersweet moment. He had taken that abuse for our entertainment, because he knew no better, because it was who he was in the ring and in life, because it was what had made him our hero, both to his benefit and at his expense.
An athlete ceases to exist, remembered only for his profession, thought of only on occasion. New action heroes take to the screen.
We had hoped Arturo Gatti would retire to comfort, to a life he had fought for, as literal a life of blood, sweat and tears as one could have. But it is difficult for former athletes to adjust, particularly so for boxers. Gatti had lived a turbulent life even during his career. Without routine, without the daily discipline of training, he was left to his vices.
“He partied like he fought – hard and heavy,” said fight photographer Tom Casino. “I knew if he continued drinking something bad was going to happen. It was inevitable.”
Casino spoke those words on an episode of “48 Hours Mystery” that aired this past weekend on CBS, a broadcast that looked into Gatti’s death more than two years ago in Brazil. Initially ruled a homicide, police concluded it to be suicide, a difficult conclusion for all to stomach, an impossible conclusion for many to accept.
“My gut says he didn’t take his life,” said Micky Ward, whose last three pro fights were the legendary trilogy with Gatti. “I just can’t see him taking his own life,” Ward told the television crew. “That’s just not him. Everything in life was going good for him.”
Other notable boxers have died tragically in recent years. Diego Corrales left us too early after crashing his motorcycle in 2007. Vernon Forrest chased after a man who had just robbed him and wound up being shot and killed. Alexis Arguello is believed to have killed himself. Forrest and Arguello, like Gatti, died in 2009.
Gatti’s death has remained an open wound. His widow, once a suspect in his death, was set free. Many of those close to him set out to prove that police had made a mistake. They funded a private investigation that recently concluded. They said the investigation found, with certainty, what they had felt all along – Arturo Gatti didn’t take his own life.
“48 Hours” presented both cases: that made by Gatti’s widow and that made by those who blame her for his death.
That the last fights of Gatti’s career had been so hard to watch was because they showed him more vulnerable than ever. We prefer to think of our heroes in memorable montages, recalling them in their greatest moments.
“48 Hours” proved difficult to watch because it humanized Gatti even further. We saw his body lying prone, heard about his many personal problems, and realized that the man boxing fans idolized for his pugilistic pursuits was now having all of his flaws and follies publicly aired.
This was not how we wanted to remember him. This was not how we wanted others to know him.
He had alcohol and drug problems, and a temper, and drunk-driving charges, and fights with police officers. He had a troubled marriage, battled depression and had been accused of domestic violence.
“He got depressed. He didn’t know what to do. He started drinking a lot,” Amanda Rodrigues Gatti said of Arturo after his retirement. “There was the man I fell in love, the funny, the romantic, the lovely husband and father, and then there was this person that would change when he was drunk. He would become aggressive, nasty. He was a completely different man when he was drinking.”
She remains the suspect in the minds of Gatti’s fans, members of his team and nearly all of his family and friends. They look to the changes in his will just weeks before his death, changes which left his money to her and their son. They recall how she treated him, the threats they heard her make, the mean text messages she sent him when the couple had separated. They point to the blood on the floor, to the wound on the back of his head, to the flimsiness of the purse strap which he supposedly used to hang himself.
They point to the brief Brazilian police investigation that absolved her of blame, and to the extensive private investigation that found that Arturo Gatti’s death wasn’t a suicide. “If not him,” they think, “then it must be her.”
One longtime friend and one of Gatti’s brothers think Arturo committed suicide, however.
With authorities in Brazil yet to reopen the case, Gatti’s family sought to make his death part of the civil court battle over the late boxer’s estate.
It is a battle in which there are no real winners. He is still gone.
I am still missing Arturo Gatti. I will never stop recalling that ninth round in his first fight with Micky Ward, recalling how he fought through a broken hand in the trilogy’s finale, recalling the hooks out of nowhere and the bravery and the warrior mentality.
He was what we wanted to be: strong and courageous and victorious. But he was also what we all are: imperfect in his better moments, troubled in his worst.
His was a turbulent life, one that was taken too early, whether it was by someone else’s hand or his own. I will miss him for how we went to war, and I will always miss him as he rests in peace.
The 10 Count
1. Walking Contradictions, part one:
Victor Ortiz, Sept. 17, 2011, speaking at the post-fight press conference about his blatantly head-butting Floyd Mayweather Jr.: “All of a sudden I was gonna come in to throw, and the moment I did that he came in and I went right for his face on accident.”
Ortiz, Sept. 22, 2011, talking to TMZ Live: “I did the head butt, but only because I told Cortez, twice, he used the elbow on my eyebrow, my right eyebrow, and I said ‘Cortez, elbow, elbow,’ and he says ‘Fight out of it,’ and then Mayweather is smiling at me, so I was like alright, boom.”
2. Walking Contradictions, part two:
Carl Froch, Sept. 23, 2011, quoted in a Showtime news release about the postponement of his Super Six final due to Andre Ward suffering a cut in training camp: “This is absurd and unprofessional. Ward needs to get his act together. Of course, you’ve got to take the medical advice seriously, but for a cut to put you out of a fight for a full five weeks before the event is ludicrous. If it were two weeks out from the fight, maybe I’d understand. But he’s got 35 days to deal with it. To me, he’s showing his weakness.”
Carl Froch, Sept. 27, 2010, writing in This is Nottingham about why a back injury he’d suffered had postponed a bout with Arthur Abraham scheduled for Oct. 2: “As you are well aware I’ve been nursing a back injury that put paid to a date in Monaco against Arthur Abraham. I’ve also come down with a bad cold that’s spread to my chest. I’ve gone ahead with fights in the past when I’ve been injured or not 100 percent. But this fight is too important to take any risks.”
(Of course, Froch’s injury came much closer to his fight, but he understands the consequences of missing any prolonged period of training camp).
Amusingly, amid doubts about Froch’s back injury, he later told a Fightnews.com interviewer, “I can’t really talk about the bad back because there is an ongoing issue about it. Therefore, I’m better off not talking about it without my lawyer being present.”
3. Walking Contradictions, part three:
Antonio Tarver, Sept. 24, 2011, writing on Twitter about how Danny Green, whom Tarver beat by technical knockout in July, will be facing Krzystof Wlodarczyk for a cruiserweight title in November: “How does a fighter who get KO’d in his last fight and is qualified to fight for another title in his very next fight? Where do they do that at? In Australia…”
Antonio Tarver, Oct. 1, 2005: Tarver defends his light heavyweight championship against Roy Jones Jr., winning by unanimous decision. Jones was coming off a knockout loss to Glen Johnson and a technical knockout loss to Tarver.
4. Bernard Hopkins vs. Chad Dawson is 19 days away, and the buzz is much closer to pitiful than it is palpable.
That’s not as much an indictment on the fight – though most believe sticking the fight on pay-per-view is grounding the promotion before it could even get going – as it is the consequences of being scheduled between three fights that people actually will pay good money for.
Ortiz-Mayweather was Sept. 17. Manny Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez III is Nov. 12. Miguel Cotto-Antonio Margarito II is Dec. 3.
Ortiz-Mayweather and Pacquiao-Marquez got four episodes of HBO’s “24/7” documentary/commercial series. Cotto-Margarito is getting two episodes, per BoxingScene’s own Mitch Abramson.
Ortiz-Mayweather and Cotto-Margarito also got those “Face Off” segments in which the fighters trade words at a table, tension that helps build up to when the fighters trade punches in the ring. “Face Off” was integral in selling Hopkins’ rematch this past May with Jean Pascal.
It should also be noted that just four weeks separate Ortiz-Mayweather (a Golden Boy Promotions show) from Hopkins-Dawson (a Golden Boy/Gary Shaw Productions show). It’s not surprising that the lion’s share of promotional efforts went into September’s blockbuster event.
5. We shouldn’t be surprised by the latest increase in pay-per-view pricing, not so long as we continue to buy in order to sate our appetite for fights.
Ortiz-Mayweather, the kind of pay-per-view that in the past would’ve cost $54.95, had a suggested retail price of $59.95, not including the additional $10 for a high-definition broadcast (because $60 apparently doesn’t entitle viewers to the best possible product).
The first fight between Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito cost $49.95. Three years later, their rematch has a price tag of $54.95, according to Lance Pugmire of the Los Angeles Times.
There are more and more people turning to illegal streams of boxing broadcasts, but there remains a core group of boxing fans who will buy the big fight. In years past, a show of some significance would bring in a buy rate of at least 300,000.
With that as our baseline, the $5 increase for Cotto-Margarito will net an additional $1.5 million, and that’s at the very least. A buy rate of just 1 million for Ortiz-Mayweather, meanwhile, would rake in an additional $5 million (the official buy rate for that pay-per-view has not yet been released).
6. The infamy from Antonio Margarito’s hand wrap tampering has brought him more capital than punishment.
7. God bless the occasional delusional press release.
Some sanctioning body called the WBF (WTF?) noted to a pair of websites last week that Evander Holyfield “has decided to relinquish the WBF heavyweight title in order to challenge Alexander Povetkin for the WBA ‘regular’ world title in December.”
(Povetkin vs. Holyfield hasn’t been reported yet as being official. The WBA doesn’t have Holyfield ranked in its top 15, though as it found a way to put Hasim Rahman at No. 1, it can find a way to get Holyfield qualified for another title shot.)
The WBF’s president said that Holyfield gave up the belt “with much regret.”
Uh huh.
How heartbreaking it must have been for the former lineal cruiserweight champion and former two-time lineal heavyweight champion to have to give up something that he had to beat Francois Botha (41 years old) to get.
8. Botha, by the way, is slated to face Michael Grant on Nov. 19.
I’m told that both men will be walking to the ring to the tune of Prince’s “1999.”
9. Boxers Behaving Badly: Former 140-pound titleholder Paul Spadafora was arrested last week and will be charged with driving under the influence, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Associated Press.
Spadafora was pulled over for allegedly driving 66 mph, which was 26 mph over the speed limit. Police smelled alcohol, put Spadafora through field sobriety tests and then arrested him. He did not allow police to take a blood sample.
The undefeated 36-year-old has been on a supposed yet sporadic comeback since 2006, when he was paroled from a prison sentence for shooting his girlfriend in a dispute over two flat tires on his Hummer. He is 45-0-1, his last fight coming in November 2010 against some dude named Alain Hernandez.
10. Yes, Jose Luis Castillo is fighting again. And no, it’s not at heavyweight against Joan Guzman…
David P. Greisman is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. His weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com.
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