According to a report from the New York Post, former two division world champion Joey Gamache was battered last week by a mystery man.
Gamache states that he was walking, ice coffee in hand, to New York's Mendez Boxing Gym, where he works as a trainer. He says suddenly a guy ran up from behind and just clobbered him with a punch that badly fractured his jaw.
“I’m a guy who can take a punch,” Gamache said to The Post. “But this thug is still out there, and the next guy might not be that lucky. It’s very possible he had brass knuckles. He broke my jaw in three places. He had something in his hand.”
There were no words exchanged and the attacker was alone.
Gamache states the guy appeared to be about 5-foot-9, weighed maybe 165 or 170 pounds, and was probably in his late 30s
“When I got hit, I went down and then as I got up, I turned around and he was running. He was running fast. He turned around and looked, and I got a look at him. He looked like a street guy. But could I say I knew him? I couldn’t say that,” he said.
The surgeon at Mt. Sinai Medical Center told Gamache “that guy really knew how to throw a punch,” the ex-boxer recalled. “He said it’s one of the worst breaks he ever saw.”
Cops at the 13th Precinct have interviewed him twice, Gamache said — but so far, no one has shown him any surveillance footage from the time of the attack.
“There’s a lot of cameras,” Gamache noted. “I’m hoping they can ID this guy. He’s dangerous.”
Gamache was heavily in the news nearly two decades back, when he sued the New York State Athletic Commission for allegedly failing to accurately weigh Arturo Gatti before a bout at Madison Square Garden in 2000.
Gatti was 19 pounds above the 141-pound limit when he demolished Gamache in two rounds. Gatti passed away in Brazil under suspicious circumstances in 2009, before he could testify against the commission in the case. The death was eventually ruled a suicide by Brazilian authorities.