The Fat Kid reporting. . .
Upper Arlington – Several days ago, retired welter-weight boxer Arturo Gatti, who smashed the hell out of people during his career, was found dead at a Brazilian resort, or hotel, or a property that he was renting near a resort-type place (the reporting on this detail changed several times as the case developed, and I’m still not certain which is actually true). Normally, as you know, I write obituaries for people that I like, like Harry the K, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace, or people who, to whatever degree, figure in with BlueZer0, like Gary Doe. Unfortunately, even though I’m still unemployed, I’ve had quite a lot going on, so I didn’t have time to post on the day he actually died. And there wasn’t really that much to report on the day he died, anyway. However, now that I have made time to do this, and now that there is actually something to report, I have to acknowledge the situation with big-time puncher, Arturo “Thunder” Gatti.
Arturo “Thunder” Gatti bled up a storm and smashed dudes in the face for a long time, and now, sad to say, he’s dead.
So, for those of you who don’t know, or haven’t heard, the details are: Brazilian police believe that Gatti returned to his hotel/resort/whatever room drunk and fell asleep, and that his twenty-three year-old wife then strangled him with the strap of her purse. He was thirty-seven. Poor fucker. His wife, Amanda Rodrigues, claims that someone else must have done it, but police have trouble with her story, especially given the fact that she spent ten hours in the room with the body, allegedly without realizing Gatti was dead. So, the short version is that they pretty much know she did it, but she’s desperately grasping at straws to try to get out of it. At least that’s what it looks like right now.
That much being said, at 40-9 with 31 knockouts, Gatti was a hell of a fighter. What he was mainly known for, though, was what the kids these days are calling heart, which is apparently some kind of cultural meme for refusal to give up, or something like that. And whatever you want to call it, he had a hell of a lot of it, as showcased in his three very-long-and-bloody fights with Irish Micky Ward, who had a hell of a lot of heart (as it were) himself.
So, I’m not going to lie just because he’s dead and act like I was a huge, huge Gatti fan. I mean, I liked him, but I was never that into watching little guys fight – I always thought heavy-weights were much more interesting. But I did see two of the three Gatti/Ward fights, and they were really amazing. He actually broke his hand in one of them, and kept fighting anyway. That isn’t altogether unheard of – Tommy Morrison, for instance, did it at some point, too – but the point is that only the ridiculously tough guys can do things like that, and Gatti was one of them. And I guess that’s what I’m trying to get at – I wanted to acknowledge that he was awesome, and that it’s very sad that he’s dead.
In case you never saw Gatti fight, here’s a youtube clip of round 9 in Gatti/Ward I, where he took a pounding and came back. Even though he ultimately lost the fight, it’s still considered a great moment in his career. Peace to Arturo Gatti.
