The Many Deaths of Arturo Gatti

June 25, 2005: doomsday

I was saddened to read about Arturo Gatti. Brutally murdered this past weekend, a mere two years after retiring, at 35, from boxing. Strangled in a Brazilian vacation rental. A bloody purse strap. His young wife suspected. The early press reports spoke of a "second honeymoon" ending in the macabre. She -- plump, 23, her face covered by a hoodie in custody -- claiming to have slept soundly as his corpse grew cold in the next room. He just weeks shy of testifying in a suit against a boxing commission concerning brain damage he dealt to another boxer. Does this sound like pulp fiction yet?

It was a squalid end for the much-loved former champ. Boxing is often about dark ends, in the ring and out, but there was extra pathos given Gatti's legend. He was a sunnily optimistic journeyman. He bled like nobody's business and he hoisted his matinee idol's mug, however dented or red, every round for more. In interviews he was soft-spoken, humble, no braggart, no trash talker. He sounded like the archetypal kid brother in a 1950s TV sitcom. Like, say, the Beav after a Charles Atlas course. Well, I'm gonna go out and do what I can against that Eddie Haskel, I know he's bigger 'n me but I'm gonna try. He could handle most guys but never the best. Oscar de la Hoya whipped him.

And of course he went to war when equally matched, as in his famous trilogy in 2002-2003 with "Irish" Mickey Ward. These are thought to be among the best classic fights in the recent era. They are rebroadcast endlessly. They are exhilarating, they are ferocious. They are almost medieval in their seesawed bloodiness. They have little to do with good boxing actually. Raised on Ali, I like boxing for technical prowess mainly, for its grace and art. Neither Ward nor Gatti possessed much art nor defense nor any idea other than go forward, swing, get hit, swing, sit down, get stitched up, hear the bell, rise and gedbackoutdere. Yes they had heart, mad gonzo courage and nerve beyond all sizing as if they knew the lessons of the world are told in a catechism of pain from one man to the next. So they stood face to face and tortured each other. Always the dumbfounded look as they swung on. Bones breaking. Gatti's shattered hand hanging limply at his side as, one-fisted, he laid into the mutilated Irishman. "Fight of the year," according to Ring Magazine. 

In later years, beloved on the eastern seaboard for such heart, Gatti made many people rich. Promoters, HBO, trainers, bookies, gamblers, mooks of all vintage and origin: all got a taste. This led to him being grotesquely overmatched--elevated, foolishly, as the Great White Hope. His dismantling by Floyd Mayweather, Jr. in 2005 is a terrible thing to see. This spectacle, and not Gatti-Ward I, II or III, is among the classic fights of recent years because it is in fact representative. Its raw materials: so-so slugger vs. supernaturally gifted boxer, brute versus technical genius, plodding versus blinding speed, and most tellingly, plucky B-list endearing Everyman versus top-of-the-food-chain nihilist. Hope vs. Truth. Darwinism in three-minute bursts. In its cruel inevitability, as it ends with Gatti somehow able to cry out of eyes bulging like chemically-enlarged turnips, it epitomizes how money and horseshit fantasy rather than quality or qualifications drive this sport. I've never watched a sadder six rounds in my life. As criminal as it was to stage this event, it revealed in microcosm the business of boxing as it is usually conducted: bait for sharks.

I don't doubt Gatti died in some measure that night when his egregious hopes were mercilessly judged. It wasn't the beating, it was the meaning of the beating. Boxing careers are short fuses in a long life and his had burnt out. Two more knockouts would stretch him out before the end. According to news stories, grief followed in retirement: arrested for assaulting a former girlfriend, jailed for skipping a court date, restraining orders, hauled from a strip club, drugs and booze. And now this purse strap, this unseemly and pathetic death. Don't get up, champ. RIP, hopefully, at long last.