Irish Thunder

by Bob Halloran

  “I never thought I would see anything as exciting as their first fight,” Steward said, adding, “This is equaling it, maybe even more so for power punches.”

  The round was reminiscent of the ninth round of their first fight. Power punches landing cleanly. Both fighters taking and giving everything they had. Both fighters weakened, but still determined. It was brutal, and it was beautiful.

  “There has been nothing like this in boxing since Bowe-Holyfield a decade ago,” Merchant said referring to the three fights between heavyweights Riddick Bowe and Evander Holyfield in 1992, 1993, and 1995.

  “This is better,” Steward said with the highest of praise. “This is better, and you get more action in ten rounds than you normally get in a fifteen-round fight.”

  Micky kept coming forward, stumbling forward actually, while Gatti backed up, waiting for him to get in range. It was another very active round that Gatti was winning with dozens of hard power shots. Micky had no answer.

  “Ward almost seems like he’s ready to go,” Merchant said with thirty-five seconds still to go in the round.

  As the bell sounded, Steward stood and applauded with the rest of the fifteen thousand witnesses. Gatti had just thrown 176 punches in that round, more punches than he had ever thrown in a single round before, and he landed 61 power shots. Imagine 61 hard punches to the head and body. Micky took them all and headed back to his corner, his face a bloody mess. But his biggest problem was that his vision was severely impaired.

  “I can’t see,” Micky told his brother.

  “What do you mean you can’t see?”

  “I mean my eyes are all fucked up. Everything’s blurry. I’m seeing three of him out there.”

  “Then hit the one in the middle,” Dickie instructed without sympathy.

  Meanwhile, it was Gavin who entered the ring now instead of working from behind the ropes and over Micky’s shoulder. He needed to get in there to get a good look at the damage Gatti had inflicted. He couldn’t do anything about the eyesight, so he ignored it. Instead, Gavin squeezed down hard on the cut above Micky’s eye. And for the first time all night, Micky acknowledged the pain.

  It was obvious that Gatti has trained hard for this fight. He routinely ran ten miles a day, and his endurance was evident as he came out on his toes in the eighth round. Micky was able to land a couple of hard rights, but Gatti simply kept bouncing and moving, looking for another angle to throw from. The action from the seventh round had carried over to the eighth. Lampley admitted to hating the word incredible when describing sporting events, but added, “This is incredible.”

  “It’s as if they’re not even human,” Steward agreed.

  “It’s because they’re human that makes this such a compelling drama,” Merchant interjected. “It’s definitely not normal. Even other fighters are moved by the great toughness and resilience of these two fighters, qualities that are every bit as rare as great boxing ability.”

  Again, it was nearly silent in Micky’s corner. His cuts were tended to for the full minute allotted. Then, when it was time to rise from his stool, Micky heard, “Hands in close.” Micky couldn’t be sure if it was Dickie or Gavin who said it. His mind was fuzzy, his eyes had been bothering him for the past two rounds, and he was not sure what was happening. He looked across the ring and still saw three Gattis, and wondered how he could beat all three of them. He was so tired. Just two rounds to go in his career. He would keep fighting until the end, “But what’s the matter with my eyes?” he wondered.

  The ninth round seemed to go more quickly than most for Micky. It was a blur. A round he doesn’t remember as clearly as many others he fought, yet it was very much like most of the rounds he fought with Gatti. Gatti had the advantage in punches thrown and punches landed, while Micky remained in a steady march toward his opponent. Micky used his instincts and experience to get through the round.

  “I fought seeing double for three rounds,” Micky explained later. “I saw 4 or 5 of him. It was weird. It was upside down. Three Gattis on top of each other. It was weird. I was telling Dickie in the corner, ‘I can’t see.’ He was like, ‘What do you want me to do?’ And I said, ‘I’m not gonna stop.’”

  Gatti had a broken right hand, and he kept going. Micky was seeing double and triple, and he kept going. There was no championship on the line. The money would be paid whether the fight went the distance or not, but they kept going anyway. And they weren’t just going through the motions. They were fighting hard, determined to not go down at all or go down in a blaze of glory, and that’s why they are wrapped in glory to this day.

  “It never crossed my mind that I should quit on the stool,” Micky said. “Despite being told that I could have gone blind during the Green fight, and now not having proper vision in this fight. I didn’t think of not fighting the last three rounds. I figured, ‘Hell, I’ve fought three hundred rounds, I can go three more.’”

  Now, he only had one more to go. Three more minutes of a boxing life that had lasted three decades. From a seven-year-old boxing in the rain to a thirty-eight-year-old who reigned as the king of the working man. Micky felt the water pouring down over. His head was down and the cool water dripped down his face and into a bucket below him. He kept his eyes closed and his mind blank. He couldn’t focus on the magnitude of the moment. It was too big, and he was too tired. The only thought that registered for him was that he should turn to the other bucket and spit out some blood.

  “Last round of your career, Micky,” Dickie said. But whether it was the last round or not, it felt like every other round. Time for Micky to go out and give it all he had.

  “Last round,” McGirt reminded his fighter and then cautioned him, “Use your legs, but let your hands go. Box him, but move your hands. We’re gonna close this show big, but no slugfest. You understand.”

  The tenth round began with a hug at the center of the ring.

  Clearly, only Micky and Arturo knew what was inside the other man, and they truly respected each other for it. They had earned each other’s respect, and in so doing they had found something that is sometimes even more elusive than the respect of others. They found the respect of self. To watch what Arturo was capable of, and to realize that he was capable of the same courage and greatness gave Micky what he had fought so long to achieve—self-respect.

  Thirty seconds later, Micky wobbled when Gatti caught him with a hard left. For the last three minutes of his career, Micky would need to stand up in the face of adversity and find a way to survive.

  Gatti threw flurries and then got on his bike. He gave the impression that he was fresh, but midway through the round, Micky stunned him with a great left hook to the head. Gatti was forced backward, and Micky pursued him, landing a hard right. Gatti looked like he might go down. His rear end was pushed between the ropes as he bent over to avoid another blow. He was able to stand up and uppercut his way out of the predicament when Micky took a moment to rest.

  “That may have been the last hurrah of Ward,” Merchant uttered.

  In the final thirty seconds of Micky’s career, he engaged in a battle befitting his epic trilogy with Gatti. Both men finished their three-battle war by landing hard shots to the head.

  “Oh my God!” Steward said in awe.

  Micky and Gatti repeated the violence until the final bell sounded, and then they hugged again, the product of mutual respect and sheer exhaustion.

  “They’re done,” Lampley punctuated the moment. “What Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward share together, only they know, only they can touch it, only they can feel it.”

  Dickie was among the first to enter the ring, and he lifted Micky high in the air so that all the spectators could salute his brother, the valiant warrior. When Dickie was in jail, he had promised himself and Micky that he would get out someday and make him a champion. He kept that promise. Micky was a champion of the people. Part of the subtext of Micky’s career is that he gave Dickie a chance to walk with him toward something better than what they had k
nown as kids growing up in Lowell. Micky’s career was a beacon in Dickie’s life, a light that he could follow out of the darkness of his drug addiction. Micky had stayed straight on his path, and Dickie had stayed straight on his. Together they had arrived at this moment.

  The ring filled up with people very quickly, but Micky was able to find some solitude in his corner. Only Dickie was there helping him remove his gloves. Micky wore a big smile. He knew it wasn’t likely that he had won the fight, but he was happy nevertheless. He was relieved, not only that his career was over, but that this especially difficult fight was over.

  “Are you hurt?” someone asked.

  “Just my hands,” Micky said.

  “Probably from hitting him on the head,” Dickie said, and Micky laughed. He was exhausted. He was hurt. He stood there with a fat lip, a swollen left cheek, blood leaking out of three different cuts on his face, and triple vision. But he was retired. And that was something to feel good about.

  “After thirty grueling rounds, a round of applause for two warriors who gave it everything they had in this ring,” Buffer rallied the crowd. “We now go to the scorecards for the final chapter of the Gatti-Ward trilogy. Joseph Pasquale scores it 96-93. George Hill, 96-93. Luis Rivera, 97-92. All for the winner by unanimous decision. Arturo ‘Thunder’ Gatti!”

  Micky didn’t seem to listen to the announcement. He was preoccupied with trying to get his gloves off. He made one final tug as Gatti raised his arms in exultation. Immediately, Gatti looked around the ring to find Micky, and they embraced again. It was a proper ending to one of the greatest trilogies in boxing history, and it was a proper decision by the judges. In the end, Gatti outlanded Micky 349 to 128. Of those 349 punches, Gatti only landed 98 jabs. The rest were power shots. “I know what type of man Micky Ward is,” Gatti told Merchant in the ring after the fight. “I knew he was coming in tonight to fight the best fight of his life. If it had been anybody else, he would have quit. And Micky Ward hurt me in the fourth round. I hurt my hand in the fourth round, but Micky Ward is unbelievable. He’s got a heart. And for someone who wants to retire, he fought a helluva fight.”

  Then Merchant turned to Micky and asked him how he felt about going through one last incredibly difficult fight. Micky responded,“ He caught me with some good shots early that stunned me. It threw my equilibrium off. He fought a great fight. He hurt me early, not really bad, but enough to get me a little dizzy. I just couldn’t get untracked after that. He fought a great fight. He fought his fight. I take my hat off to him. No excuses. I was in great condition. Things happen in the ring, you always have a game plan, but sometimes you have to go to something else if that doesn’t work, and that’s what happened.”

  Merchant was curious about what happened when Gatti hurt his hand, especially the conversation with McGirt in his corner. Gatti explained that he just wanted McGirt to know that he had hurt his hand, so that McGirt would understand what was going on and alter the strategy as he saw fit.

  “How soon did you know that you were fighting a one-or one-and-a-half-handed fighter?” Merchant asked Micky.

  “I knew as soon as he hit me. I could see it in his face. I could tell. He wasn’t throwing with the power that he caught me with earlier. I knew it, but he’s got balls like you wouldn’t believe. He’s got heart. I told you he’s like Jason. He doesn’t stop. You can’t stop him. That’s his nickname, not Thunder.

  “He caught me earlier in the fight with a good right hand that discombobulated me,” Micky continued. “I just couldn’t get my legs under me like I wanted to. I knew he’d come back from it. That’s what he’s about. He comes back. All the time I hurt him was at the end of the round, never at the beginning.”

  The post-fight interview is an odd occurrence, because it happens so soon after the two fighters have been beaten about the head. How can they be expected to give well-thought-out answers to questions involving events that transpired during the heat of battle? Their minds are racing, and their bodies are drained. Still, Micky was eloquent in his praise of Gatti, his message to young kids, and in his acknowledgment of his own legacy.

  “It’s mutual respect,” Micky explained. “I want to beat him more than anything in the world, but outside he’s a human. He’s a beautiful guy. That’s what it’s about. It’s about respect. It’s not about who’s tougher. We’re both tough guys. It’s about respect, and that’s what all the kids in the world should have is respect for each other. I gave it my all. I always gave it my all, a hundred percent. I’d tell any kid, don’t get into it unless you’re serious, because it’s a serious sport.”

  “Is this series going to be with you and identify you for the rest of your life?” Merchant inquired.

  “Yeah, probably, most definitely. And I’ll stay friends with him for life. That’s just the way it is.”

  Friends for life with the man who hit you a thousand times in thirty rounds of magnificently violent boxing. Near the end of the HBO broadcast, Emmanuel Steward tried to explain how earning another boxer’s respect is the first step toward everlasting friendship.

  “It’s respect, and to some degree you even learn to love each other. When you hit a person with the best punch you’ve got, and they just come right back to you, first of all, you respect them, and after a certain time you actually have to say, ‘I love this person.’ Somebody can be this tough, to come back and fight and the anger becomes respect.”

  As Steward spoke, Micky was being helped out of the ring. His arm draped around Dickie’s shoulder. They were brothers who came to this point in their lives from vastly different directions. They would leave in different directions as well. Dickie really didn’t know where to go from here. He was forty-five years old and had yet to hold a steady job, an ex-con without a high school education. What choices did he have? He was undoubtedly on his way back to a gym in Lowell where he could find more fighters to train. Wouldn’t they all want to be trained by the guy who once fought Sugar Ray Leonard, and who brought Micky to the top of the mountain?

  “Sure they would,” Dickie thought.

  Micky would also be heading home to Lowell, eventually. But the first place Micky was headed was to the hospital—where he would meet up with Arturo Gatti.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - TWO

  Micky and Arturo were both rushed to the Atlantic City Medical Center after the fight. Charlene sat in the front seat of Micky’s ambulance while Sal stayed in the back, holding an ice pack to Micky’s head.

  When Sal tried to put the oxygen mask over Micky’s face, Micky stopped him and said, “Sal, I needed that thing in the third round. I don’t need it now.”

  Within minutes, Micky was in the trauma room. Doctors quickly determined that he was dehydrated and needed stitches in his cheek and above his eye. He was placed on a heart monitor and left alone for a few minutes. His double vision was making it difficult for him to keep his eyes open without adding to his headache, so he closed his eyes and tried to rest.

  Suddenly, the curtain separating him from another patient swung open, and Micky heard, “I think we should get paid more money for this.”

  It was Arturo offering the best smile he could through his swollen face and busted-up lip.

  “How you feeling?” Arturo asked with genuine concern.

  “I’m hurting,” Micky answered truthfully.

  “Me too,” Gatti admitted.

  They didn’t talk about the fight or their places in history. They talked about mundane things, about their fiancées waiting for them in the lobby and about playing together in an upcoming golf tournament at Foxwoods. At one point, Micky looked down and realized that he wasn’t wearing anything on his feet.

  “Somebody stole my shoes,” he blurted. “I don’t know who the hell stole my shoes!”

  Micky noticed Gatti was wearing sneakers that were just like his. He knew they weren’t his, but he teased Gatti anyway.

  “Hey, those are my sneakers,” he charged. “What are you doing with my sneakers?”

&nb
sp; “These aren’t yours,” Gatti protested. “What size do you wear?”

  Micky wore a size 8. Gatti wore a size 10.5. The mystery of what happened to Micky’s shoes was never solved. Micky and Arturo laughed about that, and they laughed some more when they traded stories about how beat-up they felt. They were the happiest patients at the hospital that night.

  “We were laughing our asses off,” Micky recalls. “His lip was all cut up, and my eyesight wasn’t for shit. I had to get stitches, too, but it was fun!”

  The fun was interrupted when the doctor came in to sew up Micky’s cuts. At that point, the curtain separating Micky and Arturo was closed again. While the doctor tended to Micky, Ron Borges stayed to observe and to continue his post-fight interview with Micky.

  “Well, now you’re the best kind of fighter there is,” Borges told Micky. Then, while Micky was still trying to figure out what that meant, Borges added, “You’re an ex-fighter.”

  “Yes, I am.” Micky confirmed.

  “A year from now, just remember that’s what you are,” Borges advised. “You’re an ex-fighter.”

  “I will,” Micky promised.

  “They might throw a lot of money at you to fight Kostya Tszyu or somebody else,” Borges said. “Everybody could use an extra million. How are you going to say no to that?”

  “I have nothing left,” Micky responded. “I can’t keep going.”

  At three o’clock in the morning, after Micky had been given IV fluids, a complete physical, and a CAT scan, it was time to return home to Lowell. A limo arrived to take Micky back to the hotel, and he was given a substantial amount of painkillers.

  “What are you gonna do with those?” Borges asked.

  “Not give them to my brother. I can promise you that,” Micky answered.

  Before he left, Micky went over to Gatti.

  “You be careful,” Micky said.

  “You be careful, too. It’s dangerous out there,” Gatti offered, referring to Atlantic City and the world in general.