The Arturo Gatti pictures Thread

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The last public appereance of Arturo Gatti,at the Holt vs Bradley fight in Montreal on april 4th.

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Probably the last picture taken of Arturo Gatti,around a month or two from his death in Brazil with Amanda Rodrigues and son Arturo Jr.
Is it just the light or is the Warrior tatoo on his belly gone?

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Autopsy raises doubts about Arturo Gatti's death


SAO PAULO -- An autopsy indicates former boxing champion Arturo Gatti may have committed suicide, been accidentally killed or murdered, according to a Brazilian newspaper that said it obtained a copy of the coroner's initial findings.

Police have said they are certain Gatti's 23-year-old wife strangled the boxer with her purse strap as he drunkenly slept July 11, but the autopsy report raises some doubts.

Gatti was found dead in the apartment he was renting with wife Amanda Rodrigues in the Brazilian seaside resort of Porto de Galinhas in the northeastern state of Pernambuco.
In the state capital of Recife, the Jornal do Comercio newspaper reported Saturday that the autopsy findings it obtained stated Gatti's body was "suspended and hanged, indicating he may have committed suicide."

The autopsy report, according to the newspaper, also said that "murder or accidental death" could not be ruled out. There was no explanation for "accidental death."

Paula Cysneiros, the spokeswoman for the medical examiners office that performed the autopsy, would not confirm the newspaper's report.

Police arrested Rodrigues on su****ion of murdering the former two-division champion. She maintains her innocence and is being held in a prison in Recife. She has not been charged -- according to Brazilian law, police have until this Wednesday to hand over their findings to prosecutors, who will decide if charges are to be filed.

A visitation for Gatti is scheduled for Sunday at Maison Funeraire Magnus Poirier in his adopted hometown of Montreal, with a funeral on Monday at Notre Dame De La Defense.
Rodrigues told investigators she awoke July 11 and found her husband's body about 9 a.m. She then called police.

Investigators said she was the only suspect and they are certain she killed Gatti in the apartment where they and their 10-month-old son arrived for a second honeymoon. The boy was unhurt and was in the care of Rodrigues' family.

Investigators said there was no sign of forced entry and that the electronic locks on the apartment indicated only Gatti and his wife had entered it.

Police said Gatti had marks on his throat, indicating he was strangled.

Rodrigues' sister, Flavia, told the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo earlier this week that there is "no way she could have strangled a man of that size."

Rodrigues' attorney, Celio Avelino, told The Associated Press that he agreed.

"She is fragile, young and skinny -- how could she kill a boxing champion?" Avelino said. "When she awoke, she presumed he had committed suicide. But she had nothing to do with it."

Police also said there was a knife wound in the back of Gatti's head and displayed a small steak knife along with the bloodied, white purse strap -- both found near his body.

Citing the results of the autopsy, the Jornal do Comercio newspaper said the wound "may have occurred when the body fell to the floor."

Police have also said they think the crime scene had been altered before they arrived -- indicating that Rodrigues could have tried to make it appear as if Gatti had committed suicide, police spokeswoman Milena Saraiva told the AP earlier this week.

Saraiva said the death may have been premeditated and Rodrigues may have encouraged Gatti to drink excessively so she would be able to overpower him later.

Rodrigues, in a letter given to the AP on Wednesday, said she didn't commit the crime.

"I'm innocent and I know that this will be proven in a few days," she wrote in the letter. She ended the note by addressing the couple's infant son, writing: "Junior -- soon mama will be at home!"

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Says it all.

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[KittenFlaps]

See sig. It's actually a picture of a famous sculpture by Michaelangelo called La Pieta which features Mary holding the body of Jesus, only with Arturo Gatti's head.

My girlfriend photoshopped it for me a couple days before he died. I felt a little creeped out by the coincidence, but then I figured it was just more appropriate.

RIP Champ. Miss you every day.

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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 "******ed" 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."

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See sig. It's actually a picture of a famous sculpture by Michaelangelo called La Pieta which features Mary holding the body of Jesus, only with Arturo Gatti's head.

My girlfriend photoshopped it for me a couple days before he died. I felt a little creeped out by the coincidence, but then I figured it was just more appropriate.

RIP Champ. Miss you every day.

That's awesome.

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[IMG]MONTREAL (AP) — Arturo Gatti was remembered as a big-hearted, star fighter at his funeral Monday, drawing a standing ovation from mourners when his mother received a championship belt from the World Boxing Council.[/IMG]Grief and cheers: Boxing community pays respects at Arturo Gatti's funeral in Montreal

MONTREAL (AP) — Arturo Gatti was remembered as a big-hearted, star fighter at his funeral Monday, drawing a standing ovation from mourners when his mother received a championship belt from the World Boxing Council.

More than 1,000 mourners packed Notre Dame de la Defense church in the heart of Montreal's Italian community to pay respects to the 37-year-old boxer who was found dead July 11 at a Brazilian resort.

"He had the same personality when he was boxing the ring, and in his life he gave it his all," said Canadian boxing promoter and former national boxing coach Yvon Michel, who has known Gatti for 30 years.

Gatti's wife, Amanda Rodrigues, is being held as the prime suspect. She has been accused, but not charged, of strangling her husband with a purse strap as he slept.

A coroner's report last weekend in Brazil indicates Gatti died of asphyxiation after his body was "suspended and hanged," opening the possibility he may have committed suicide, authorities said.

"Nobody believes whatsoever that there's even a one percent chance of a suicide. He lived life to the fullest," said Ivano Scarpa, a close family friend who spoke during the funeral service.

Gatti lived in Montreal with his wife and family. Scarpa said family and friends are su****ious of Rodrigues, adding the couple had a tumultuous relationship.

Gatti retired in 2007 with a 40-9 record and two world titles in his 16-year professional career.

"We never knew he would be such a great fighter. I was always happy to see his success, to see him walk in the gym a boy and become a great man," said a letter from former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. The letter was sent to Gatti's family and read by family friend Mario Costa.

When his mother, Ida Gatti, received the posthumous championship belt in the fighter's honor, mourners stood and applauded.

"I don't think we'll see another fighter like this," boxing trainer Howard Grant said. "You have to go back to the old days and guys like Rocky Graziano or Jake La Motta."

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