I missed a bunch of this fight between the soccer and hockey games on tonight, but Gatti and Ward are once again pounding the crap out of each other. I don't know how either guy made it out of the 7th round, just tremendous. Gatti was knocked down in the sixth, but is still winning on the card of Harold Letterman, fwiw. If Gatti doesn't get himself knocked out this round (10th), he should win. Gatti is fighting with a broken right hand and both guys have faces that resemble menu items at Peter Luger's Steakhouse. They are going toe to toe right to the end. I'm not exactly sure where the line is between bravery and stupidity, but I can tell you it runs through the house of Arturo Gatti. He is a living, jr. lightweight version of Rocky Balboa. Always bleeding, always close to both winning and losing, he puts his heart out there and tries to out-courage his opponent. Makes me wonder what his head/heart in Tyson's body could have done.
The fight ends and Arturo Gatti wins by unanimous decision. 96-93 96-93 97-92 "Irish" Mickey Ward is set to retire after this one. Gatti threw 845 punches, over half with a broken hand from the 4th round on. I'll have to remember that next time I "tough out" a stubbed toe and make it all the way to the can.
The respect between the two was awesome.If more fights and fighters were like that instead of the dire bilge they usually are... One can only hope for a three fight DVD compilation or something like that.
all 3 gatti vs Ward fights are all time classics.. Even though they were non-title fights. unbeatable stuff.
What was sick was that Gatti at times kept throwing the right. Sure a couple of them were to the body but he also threw a couple more to the head. I can't imagine throwing a right hand punch to someone's head with a broken hand. That guy has big ganas. Every time he threw it, you could see clearly on his face and how he threw it that it hurt him. But he kept throwing it and throwing it. A crazy thing, is that I think Ward was really really really out of it in the 7th and 8th round. If Gatti would have pressed a little bit more he could have knocked him out. But Ward just held his ground and didn't throw too many punches in the 8th. All in all though that fight was fantastic. Especially the 7th round. Those two just stood in the center of ring and threw haymaker after haymaker at each other and most of them landed. It was incredible.