Irish Thunder

by Bob Halloran

  DiBella told Sal that boxing can be a funny game. Sometimes you have to lose to win. If Micky had beaten Leija and looked good doing it, Gatti and his people wouldn’t want anything to do with him. Micky had always been the kind of fighter who made opponents wonder, “Why am I putting myself through this, fighting this guy?” But by losing to a soft puncher like Leija, Micky looked vulnerable. Gatti would have no doubt that if Micky couldn’t beat Leija, he certainly couldn’t beat him. Gatti would go where the money was, and the money would be better with Micky, because styles make good fights. And style-wise, Gatti-Ward was better than Gatti-Leija. DiBella knew that the way the fight went down wouldn’t affect the attractiveness of a Gatti-Ward fight.

  “Leija got fucked,” Borges explains. “He thought it was a done deal that the winner would get Gatti next. And it would have been a done deal if Micky had looked better. But the dollars were there because Micky didn’t look good against Leija. So, Gatti can get some credit for beating a tough guy without taking too much risk. Micky looked closer to done.”

  But Micky wasn’t done. In fact, he was just beginning.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Just about the same time that Micky had his very first fight, the one in the rain outside the Lynn Harbor House when he was seven years old, a baby was born on the other side of the ocean. Giovanni and Ida Gatti decided to name their fourth child Arturo. The family emigrated to Canada, and young Arturo Gatti grew up on Joliette Street in the heart of Montreal’s “Little Italy.” Arturo played soccer and hockey as a child, but he quickly developed a passion for boxing. As Micky had done, Arturo followed his older brother into the gyms and began boxing when he was seven.

  Arturo won three Golden Gloves titles, two Canadian titles, and fought in the World Championship in Peru. As a nineteen-year-old, he lost in the Olympic trials for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and decided to turn pro. He moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, and began his professional career by winning twenty-nine of his first thirty fights, picking up the USBA and IBF super featherweight titles along the way. But he went winless in three fights in 1998, and it looked like his career could be headed in the wrong direction. He was a champion at twenty-four and an ex-champion at twenty-six, and word was that he was partying a little too hardy. After going zero for three in 1998, Gatti fought only one round in 1999, but it was a first-round knockout of Reyes Munoz, and Munoz was taken from the ring on a stretcher. Gatti, already dubbed the “Human Highlight Film” for his ability to withstand and dish out punishment, was still a very marketable commodity. Boxing fans loved to see this guy fight, but in an effort to give the people what they wanted, Gatti was putting his career in jeopardy.

  “Arturo was a great boxer, but he played to the crowd a little bit,” Gatti’s manager, Pat Lynch, said. “He had these wars and he forgot about what a great boxer he is, and he’d just brawl. Those wars are so memorable, everybody figured it to be a short career if he continued like that, but he just kept going.”

  Those wars included his 1997 bout with former world champion Gabriel Ruelas. On that October night, Ruelas peppered Gatti with seventeen unanswered power shots in the fourth round, and it looked like Gatti would be going down in defeat. Somehow he managed to stay upright, and then he floored Ruelas with a vicious left hook to the jaw in the fifth round. Ruelas rose before the count of ten, but he couldn’t continue. That fight and his 1998 battle with Ivan Robinson were both dubbed “Fight of the Year” by Ring magazine.

  But how many grueling toe-to-toe brawls does a fighter have in him before he’s hit in the face by the end of his career? That may have been the question surrounding Gatti before he knocked Munoz out and then destroyed Joey Gamache in February 2000. As Gatti was making the move up to the junior welterweight division, he won four consecutive fights, three of them by knockout in the first two rounds, the other a unanimous decision over previously unbeaten Joe Hutchinson. So Gatti was able to convince people in boxing that he still had plenty left in his tank and, in fact, as he got heavier, he got stronger, and therefore he still deserved big paydays. Now, however, the big question around Gatti involved steroid allegations.

  “Steroids?” Sal LoNano wondered out loud. “It didn’t ring true to me. Dickie was saying he was taking steroids and novocaine in the face. But nobody’s gonna cover this shit up with those urine tests before and after a fight.”

  Still, Gatti’s demolition of a talented fighter from Lewiston, Maine, not only raised eyebrows, it also initiated significant changes in pre-fight weighins. Gatti was supposed to weigh 141 pounds for the fight against Gamache, and on the day before the fight, he stepped on the scale in full view of a hundred witnesses, but as soon as the slide was pushed across the bar to the 141-pound mark, he stepped off. There was immediate question as to whether he had actually made weight or not, but there was no protest. The next day, HBO unofficially weighed both fighters again, and this time Gatti weighed 160 pounds. Gamache was 145. Gatti had apparently gained some twenty pounds in twenty-four hours. “Too much pasta,” his handlers first joked. Later, Lynch questioned the validity of the second weighin, claiming that it was done on a bathroom scale on an uneven floor.

  As it was when Micky fought Mike Mungin, the additional fifteen pounds and Gatti’s six-inch reach advantage proved to be too much for Gamache. Gatti punched through Gamache’s defense, wobbling him with nearly every blow. Gamache, a former champion with a 55-3 record, went to the canvas twice in the first round and nearly died in the second round. Gatti hit him with a thunderous left hook and a dynamic right uppercut that put Gamache out before he hit the floor. Gamache was lifeless for seven minutes. He slipped into a coma and spent two days in the hospital. Gamache ultimately survived, but with serious neurological damage and near-constant headaches for years after the beating. He never fought again.

  Gamache first sued the New York Boxing Commission for 5.5 million dollars and later filed suit against Gatti, his manager, Top Rank, Main Events, and the New York State Athletic Commission’s executive director, Anthony Russo, for ten million dollars. The second suit claimed that all of those parties knew that Gatti was overweight but made sure that the fight went ahead anyway. Decisions are still pending in both cases, but as a result of the controversy, fighters are now officially weighed a second time on the day of the fight.

  Gatti earned three hundred thousand dollars for less than six minutes of work against Gamache, and after beating a couple of lesser known opponents, he was ready for another big payday against Oscar De La Hoya—at least he thought he was ready.

  On March 24, 2001, De La Hoya opened up a gash under Gatti’s right eye in the first round of their fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Seconds later, a combination sent Gatti to the deck in a fetal position. He managed to get up, but was beaten up for four more rounds before his corner finally threw in the towel during the fifth round.

  “I could have kept going, but I respect my corner,” Gatti said after the fight. “Oscar had a pretty good defense. I never really hit him flush. He was faster than I thought.”

  So, much like Micky and a preponderance of other boxers, Gatti was once again in the position in which he needed to give his career new direction by rebounding from a loss. He glanced in Micky’s direction, but Gatti wanted a million dollars for the fight and Micky’s camp believed that he deserved at least half that, and HBO wasn’t willing to foot 1.5 million dollars for a non-title fight between junior welterweights. So, Gatti chose an easier path and knocked out Terron Millett in four rounds. That was in January 2002. It was then time to make the Micky Ward fight.

  “Now, who was Gatti gonna fight where he was gonna make any money?” Valenti remembers asking. “Who’s he gonna fight to make some money and win? Gatti had run his course. He had won a title at 130 pounds, but he was having trouble making those weights. He had lost to Ivan Robinson twice and got destroyed by De La Hoya. He didn’t have a real good win until he beat Terron Millet a couple of weeks after the Ward-Leija fight. Now, he thinks he’s all tha
t. And we’ll let him think that in order to get him in the ring. We know it’s gonna be a great fight and that Micky can win it. And if he wins it, there are a lot of directions he can take to make that big payday.”

  The deal came together very quickly. By mid-February 2002, Micky agreed to receive a 435,000 dollar purse to fight Gatti at Mohegan Sun Resort and Casino in Connecticut on May 18. Gatti’s share would be one million dollars. The purse was the richest of Micky’s career, and he could have made even more if he’d agreed to fight in Gatti’s hometown of Montreal. But Micky gave up a few thousand dollars in order to fight closer to home where he would be more comfortable. “I’m ecstatic that we’re finally going to get it on,” Micky said. “It’s the fight I wanted, and I think it’s the fight the fans wanted, too. Gatti’s one tough fighter. . . . To win, I’m going . . . to come out fighting from the start. I have to stay close to Gatti—the closer the better—to stay away from his power. I don’t want to be on the end of his punches, I want to be under ’em.”

  But as Micky had come to expect in his tumultuous and unpredictable career, the fight was in danger of being called off.

  The problem wasn’t so much between Micky and Arturo as it was between DiBella and Gary Shaw, the CEO of Main Events.

  “Shaw and DiBella had a feud like you wouldn’t believe,” Valenti recalls. “It was the Hatfields and McCoys.”

  Just to stick it to DiBella, Shaw told Team Ward that they wouldn’t be receiving any hotel rooms, food, or tickets to the fight. In essence, Micky and his camp would be frozen out of several common courtesies extended to fighters involved in fights of this magnitude. “They’re treating Micky like he’s a four-round fighter,” DiBella shouted. “We told Main Events if they don’t want to give us what’s normal for a co-main event fighter, the fight is off.”

  Once again, money was the great peacemaker. HBO ponied up another twenty-five thousand dollars to cover Team Ward’s expenses, including rooms, food, and tickets for a small entourage over at the nearby Foxwoods. At the press conference before the fight, Micky and Arturo shared a respectful embrace while DiBella and Shaw yelled profanities at one another from across the room.

  “It was like the wrong guys were preparing to get in the ring with each other,” Valenti says.

  But the right guys were ready for battle. Arturo trained in Vero Beach, Florida, and Micky trained at the World Gym in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, about five miles from his home. He adopted a training style in which he sparred several rounds, but only allowed himself thirty seconds instead of the standard one minute to rest between rounds. He hoped that these shorter rests would make it easier for him on fight night when he was given those extra thirty seconds. His primary sparring partner was then-unbeaten Providence middleweight Peter Manfredo Jr. Micky was as prepared for this fight as he had ever been. It was the biggest night of his life. He and Arturo both knew that they defined what boxing should be all about. They had very similar styles and similar skills. “It’s going to be a great fight,” Micky said days before the bout “Arturo’s a great fighter, a warrior, and a great guy. It’s been a long road for me. I take each fight like it could be my last. I’m going to fight my butt off.”

  May 18 arrived quickly. Micky put in six weeks of intense training, drove down to Uncasville, Connecticut, a few days before the fight, and turned into his ordinary irascible self. He could get real testy before a fight. It was Sal’s job to walk the tightrope between helping Micky, catering to his every need, and getting the hell out of his way. Dickie was involved in all of the training sessions, but then Sal would manage to find a convenient excuse to pull Micky away—and that suited Dickie just fine. He was content to go off on his own and do his own thing. Nobody knew exactly what that was, but they all had their suspicions.

  Team Ward came together in the locker room a few hours before Micky would enter the ring. Micky was already done with his pre-fight workout. He had worked up a good sweat and his heart was pounding when Sal called everybody together. Each man kneeled as Sal prayed. He asked God to bless Micky, to give him strength, and to please give the corner strength as well. Then he added:

  “And take care of his hands, Lord. He’s had a lot of problems with his hands.”

  Micky blessed himself and jumped to his feet. Team Ward was ready. Micky entered the ring wearing white trunks with an insignia across the cheeks that read, “Lowell Spinners.” He also wore a Spinners uniform jersey with the number 38, and a Spinners baseball cap. The “38” represented the number of career victories Micky would have, presuming he beat Gatti. And there was a charitable reason for his specially designed wardrobe that night. Similar trunks were being sold at the Spinners baseball park, and the proceeds would be donated to Kids in Disability Sports.

  Gatti stood across the ring in the red corner wearing a big smile. He was 34-5 and seven years younger, but he had much more experience than Micky had in this type of fight. He’d already made millions many times over. He’d been the main event on HBO. This wasn’t just how he made his living: this was fun. And he was enjoying every moment of it.

  “You were both given your instructions in the dressing room,” referee Frank Cappuccino said at the center of the ring. “I want you to be careful in each of your corners where you might be a little wet. So just be careful into the corner. Now, both of you touch gloves. I leave it with you.”

  Moments later, as Micky jogged in place, the bell sounded. He sprinted to the center of the ring and landed a solid left hook to Gatti’s head. Gatti was not nearly as quick as Zab Judah, but he was every bit as fluid. There was tremendous rhythm in his footwork. He appeared to be bouncing on pockets of air. Halfway through the first round, Gatti landed a roundhouse right and a good left hook. A few seconds later, he did it again. This time, a cut opened over Micky’s right eye.

  “It does look like a bad cut,” HBO’s Larry Merchant observed.

  Gatti began target practice on the cut. Micky absorbed an especially violent combination late in the round, and he pounded his fists together as if to tell himself that he better get going. The round belonged to Gatti.

  In the corner, Al Gavin was quick through the ropes. He inspected the cut, “No problem, it’s on the outside. Relax.” The cut was not directly over the eye so it wouldn’t impair his vision. Gavin squeezed the area of the cut hard for several seconds and then jammed a Q-tip into it, filling the hole with Vaseline.

  Gatti came out in the second round and landed a rapid flurry of punches. Instead of defending himself or countering, Micky took the shots and waited for the onslaught to end. When it did, Micky threw just one punch.

  “Micky is very predictable right now,” HBO fight analyst Emmanuel Steward correctly stated.

  Gatti continued to punch from all directions and with both hands. He threw a quick jab and a straight right and followed those with a left hook, each one landing. Micky was once again getting off to a slow start.

  “You can punch on him all day long, but you’re just standing there,” Dickie bellowed with exasperation between the second and third rounds. “Head movement. Double jab. Head movement. Double jab. The overhand right, but you’ve got to keep your right hand up. All he’s looking for is a hook or an uppercut on you. C’mon, deep breath. Use your thirty-second rest.”

  “C’mon Mick. You hurt him that round,” Sal lied.

  The fight was only six minutes old, but the wear and tear created by thirty years of boxing showed on Micky’s face. He was already tired and bloody. But he stood up, adjusted his red belt, the one that read WARD in big, white lettering, and prepared for the next battle. Across the ring, Buddy McGirt, Gatti’s new trainer, told him how well he was doing.

  “All right now, listen,” McGirt said. “When he gets close, keep your hands up. He’s trying to get that body shot. When he gets close to you, just keep him turning. Okay? You’re boxing beautifully. Just keep using the speed. Okay? Straight right hands.”

  In round three, Micky set up camp inside and wailed away
at Gatti’s midsection. The punches seemed to take some life out of Gatti.

  “What are you doing?” McGirt yelled incredulously. “You got his respect. Listen to me, when you get him inside, don’t take that body shot, Arturo. Listen to me, you finished beautiful. You don’t have to take that shot. Don’t take it. As soon as you get inside, go to your left. Look at me. Look at me. I’m over here. Stay focused, Arturo. Listen to me. You’re boxing beautiful. Don’t take that shot.”

  Arturo won the first three rounds, but now he was slumped ever so slightly on his stool. His eyes were glazed over, and he was having trouble focusing on McGirt’s words. The body shots hurt so much, he couldn’t move like he wanted to, and Micky had tagged him with a hard right hand just before the bell. Gatti stood and tried to clear his head, telling himself to get back to boxing.

  “Stick and move,” he told himself. “Stick and move.”

  Gatti did that for the first minute, and would have continued sticking and moving, but the punch seemed to come from nowhere. Bam! Micky landed a straight right hand with full force. Gatti’s head flung backwards from the sheer force of it. Gatti was hurt, but not in trouble. He bounced away quickly.

  Then HBO’s Jim Lampley exclaimed, “What a body shot!”

  But Lampley wasn’t marveling at Micky’s patented left hand. It was a hard left thrown by Gatti that sent Micky to his knees. And it was low. It was below the belt. While Micky was down on his knees, he pounded the canvas with one of his best combinations of the night. He was clearly frustrated and quite possibly hurt. Gatti tried to tell Cappuccino the punch was good, but the correct call was made. Cappuccino had scolded Gatti in the previous round, reminding him to keep his punches up, but there was no warning issued.

  This time he said to Gatti, “You keep doing it, fella. You keep doing it. You know it’s happening.”