What I Think Of Arturo Gatti

Arturo Gatti is dead, an apparent suicide in Rio de Janeiro, a broken man, physically and otherwise. But that's not what I want to talk about.

Nor do I want to talk about his life, his behavior, or anything like that. I did not know the man, and I do not want to judge. I simply want to talk about who he was as a fighter. Above all else, he was that: he was a fighter.

Gatti was a man. His offense was fluid but angry, quick hands and hard, with a heavy left hook. He could slug, and he learned to box. There is no doubt that he could hurt a man. But his offense was not him, and he was not his offense. Gatti had paper skin and eyes that swelled so often and so badly that they were permanently beady by the time he fought Micky Ward. And yet he would brawl. He would wade in to trade with his opponents, even as his face tore and bled. A fight in which Gatti did not look disfigured was a rare occurrence.

And, speaking of Ward, it is of course that epic, famous, bloody, brutal trilogy that must be spoken of. Gatti was more than his fights with Ward, but there is no other thing that one could start with in discussing him.

Gatti's strategy in the first fight was to box, and he was winning. But Ward popped him, and boxing was gone. Gatti was never as comfortable in that role, and he seemed to shed it gladly. It was as though he knew what was happening, knew he was being drawn in, but didn't care. He was a man, he was Thunder, and he was going to beat Irish Micky Ward by punching him, and no other way.

The key moment in the fight and, I believe, in his entire career, was the knockdown scored by Ward in the 9th (out of 10). Gatti was caught in the body, right around the kidneys, and all the strength went out of him. It was less of a knockdown than it was a man succumbing to the ludicrous amount of punishment he had taken to that point. And Gatti, the man, went to his knees.

And then Gatti, the man, climbed back to his feet. And on uncertain and unsteady legs, he retreated from Ward, ducking and weaving as he could. And then Gatti, the man, started to fight. Weak and exhausted, he threw everything he had into the punched-out Ward, short jabs followed by wide swinging rights. And he very nearly chopped Ward down, half-paralyzed and wholly spent, before his last efforts wound down. Then Gatti was helpless before Ward, who had a rally of his own, before wearing out exactly as Gatti had. The Arturo Gatti he made his way to his stool before the final round looked dead. His left eye was swollen very nearly shut, his face purple and distorted by nine rounds of reckless combat.

To me, the tenth round of Ward-Gatti I will always be Gatti's crowning achievement. As the round started, he tried to fool Ward and his own body into believing he was fresh- and he succeeded. He came out with the same sort of dancing footwork that had utterly confused Ward in the first third of the fight. After that, he started to swing. He was dead, but he was alive again. What Gatti found on that stool between those rounds was redemption- not for his spirit, and not for the fight, which he lost (unfairly, I think, but boxing often goes that way). He found redemption of his courage. The broken, defeated man who had collapsed onto his stool after dropping from a body blow was now a man fighting with borrowed strength. If it killed him, Arturo Gatti was going to finish the fight. It is no coincidence that, after he won that round, Gatti won the next two fights.

Much as I dislike Hemingway, I have to admit that if one was to use a quote for Gatti's epigram, it would be the statement of the fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea: "I will show you what a man can do, and what a man endures."

Arturo Gatti may not have been a great man; he may not have been even a good man- but he was a man, and that is a thing worthy of respect.