Some messed up Shit about Arturo Gatti's wife.... EVERYONE READ
The boxer and the knockout
As the wife of Canadian boxer Arturo Gatti is held for his murder, the Star uncovers a union heading toward the final bell
Jul 18, 2009 04:30 AM
Andrew Chung
QUEBEC BUREAU CHIEF
MONTREAL – The atmosphere over dinner was congenial. A few of world-champion boxer Arturo Gatti's best friends. Drinks. Hearty food. The comforting, casual din of a sports bar.
But when the conversation turned to children, Gatti's wife of less than two years, Amanda Rodrigues, spoke up to say Gatti's daughter, Sofia, whom he had with another woman, "didn't look normal," that she looked "retarded" and "like a mongoloid," according to people who were there.
Gatti flew into a rage, and the table scattered. His best friend, Chris Santos, remembers the incident well.
"She'd provoke him in any way possible. She treated Arthur really bad," said Santos, 36, Gatti's closest friend. "She used to say he was a bad fighter, and you know, Arthur had a lot of pride."
Even when it came to their son, 10-month-old Arturo Jr., Santos said Rodrigues would denounce what kind of father Gatti would be.
The 23-year-old Rodrigues, a former exotic dancer who hails from Brazil and met Gatti, 37 when he died, at a strip club in northern New Jersey, was charged last Sunday in his killing.
Montreal's Gatti was found dead last Saturday in Apartment 6305 at the Dorisol condominium hotel along the yellow-sand beaches of Brazil's Porto de Galinhas. Police say he had been strangled with a purse strap while passed out in a drunken slumber.
Yesterday, as Gatti's body arrived back in Montreal for a private viewing today, Rodrigues's application to be released from prison in Recife was denied. Gatti's family is girding for a battle for custody of Arturo Jr., who is with Rodrigues's family. The family's intention is for the baby's godfather, Gatti's brother Fabrizio, to adopt him.
Earlier this week, Rodrigues released a handwritten letter from jail. "The people most important to my life, who know us," she wrote, "know the size of our love."
The opposite appears to be true. The couple was fighting so much, the fact they were at it again shortly after his arrival at the northeastern Brazilian resort to meet her for a month-long stay wasn't surprising to those who knew them best.
The couple would often descend into toxic, vicious arguments, sometimes violent. They had separated numerous times during their short time together. Gatti was contemplating divorce. Rodrigues was threatening to take their child back to Brazil, which friends and family say terrified him.
Gatti wasn't the perfect husband. He maintained his penchant for hard partying and Rodrigues was often left alone, with few friends and no family in Montreal, where the couple lived. Rodrigues had also filed a restraining order against him earlier this year. After missing a court date, he was arrested in April.
But neither was Rodrigues the perfect wife. Numerous interviews suggest she did all she could to alienate Gatti's family and friends. She had an aggressive personality and wasn't afraid to mock Gatti's daughter, spread rumours about his siblings or lock horns with his friends.
At the time of Gatti's death, she had been shunned by nearly everyone in his life.
Those closest to Gatti, who captured the International Boxing Federation super-featherweight title in 1995 and the junior welterweight title in 2004, allege Rodrigues was with him because he was a multi-millionaire.
His lawyer, John Lynch, became certain of it after three events.
Two days after signing a pre-nuptial agreement, and then getting married in Las Vegas, Rodrigues began insisting he cancel it, he said. A few weeks later, the couple entered Lynch's office and Gatti asked for a copy. "He made a show of ripping up the copy in front of her, so she was happy," Lynch said. (The dramatic act carried no force of law.)
Another time, Rodrigues complained about the amount of money Gatti paid in support for Sofia, Lynch said.
Finally, she wanted to start her own fashion line. "Gimme a break," Lynch said. "I think he was smart enough to say, `I'm not giving you millions to start a fashion line because you have a whim.'"
Jeremy Filosa, a Montreal sports journalist and long-time friend of Gatti's, said Gatti spent heavily on his wife. Among other things, he bought her a Cadillac Escalade, a house for her family in Brazil and spent $30,000 to fix her teeth. Filosa said she spent a lot of time and money shopping, and Gatti was worried she was hoarding the cash he gave her because the credit cards were always maxed out.
Rodrigues's family lives in Belo Horizonte, a city the size of Toronto in Brazil's southeast. In her late teens, she left Brazil, her father, Milton, and sister, Flavia, for the United States, and apparently stayed with her mother in northern New Jersey. Family members did not respond to the Star's requests for interviews placed through Rodrigues's lawyer in Brazil.
Gatti comes from the rough-and-tumble neighbourhood of St. Michel, in north Montreal, one of six children. By age 7, the young Gatti was heading to the Olympic Boxing Club with his older brother Joe. He'd spar with a 12-year-old Mike Moffa, who, now 42, remembers Gatti "knew how to box like a man." Gatti dropped out of high school and at 19, followed Joe to New Jersey to turn pro.
One of the first people he met there was Mike Skowronski. Those party days were legendary, Skowronski, now 38, says. "We were like the (cable TV show) Entourage. ... Him being a good-looking kid, doing well, he did well in the clubs."
Skowronski said Gatti dated numerous strippers, so he thought little of it when Gatti called him all excited about meeting Rodrigues at The Squeeze Lounge in Weehawken, N.J. He thought Rodrigues, like the others, wouldn't last.
He was wrong.
When the new couple came back to Montreal after Gatti retired in 2007, Rodrigues became friendly with their neighbour Vanessa, who asked that her last name not be used. "She was alone a lot, she had no one. I could be her mother. I felt sorry for her," she said.
Vanessa said Rodrigues appeared to take good care of the baby, and seemed like a good person. "Sometimes she was aggressive, really brusque, not afraid to give her opinions."
When Rodrigues first arrived, she was embraced by the Gatti family and friends. For a long time Gatti hid that his wife had been a stripper, and friends say he defended her even as her relations with them soured.
Gatti's sister Giuseppina said she heard from a neighbour that Rodrigues complained that Gatti gave her and Fabrizio condominiums in a building he developed with his business partner Tony Rizzo. (Gatti lived in the penthouse.)
She was alienating friends too. Last April, Moffa, now a boxing coach, ran into the couple at the Bell Centre. In exchanging numbers, Rodrigues grabbed Moffa's cellphone and started typing herself. "What, you don't know how to program a cellphone?" she snapped.
Their fights got worse. For the last month they were living apart, Rodrigues even changed the locks. Gatti would drop off baby food at Vanessa's to give to Rodrigues.
Rodrigues tried to convince Gatti to change his will to favour her and Arturo Jr. Gatti apparently agreed but didn't sign the papers, Filosa said.
Gatti's mother, Ida, said she heard Rodrigues scream at her son when they were fighting, "I'm going to kill you!"
Rodrigues was jealous enough to forbid him from seeing Sofia, whose name he had tattooed on his left shoulder, Gatti's ex-fiancée Erika Rivera told the New York Daily News.
Friends said Gatti was torn up about not seeing Sofia. And when Rodrigues started threatening to take Arturo Jr. away, it worried him. Filosa believes it's one reason Gatti wanted to try to make the relationship work.
The pair planned a trip to Brazil, but first went to Europe. They left the baby with Rodrigues's mother in New Jersey. Gatti picked him up before leaving for Brazil on July 10.
That night, they ate pizza in town and downed two bottles of wine. At a bar later, Gatti drank beer. They had a fight and, Rodrigues said, he pushed her. She tried to get a room at a hostel but had no money. Rodrigues returned to the hotel. They slept on different floors of the apartment. She said when she awoke at 6 a.m. she found his body.
Police said Rodrigues showed no emotion.
For those closest to Gatti, the world has come tumbling down. For Mario Costa, with whom a young Gatti lived when he first went to the U.S., the loss is unreal. "I'm upset that Arthur didn't see this coming or didn't see that something was wrong," he said.
"And what really pains me is that he was alone. So many people loved him and in the end, he was alone. No one was there to help him."
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/668322
Picture in the link also. Amanda is a messed up mental case. She most definitely did kill him. I hope this bitch gets executed. Hope she gets her head chopped off.
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