IF STILL with us, Arturo Gatti would at 49 have been able to look back on one of the most spectacular and dynamic boxing careers of the modern era — a fighter revered by those old enough to have had the privilege of watching him in action in his prime, while also being held up by the current generation of fight fans as a throwback to a bygone era when fighters fought as much for pride as they did money.

Gatti’s untimely death at 37, by an apparent suicide in Brazil on July 10 2009, robbed boxing of a giant personality to match the giant heart and courage for which he was renowned in the ring. He was a deeply troubled man whose hardest fight, which he lost that fateful night in Brazil, was against his own demons.

In the ring he brought thunder and was part of perhaps the most thrilling and explosive trilogy of fights ever fought, against the equally legendary Micky Ward. 

Born in Cassino, Italy, in 1972, close to the mountaintop Monte Cassino monastery made famous as the site of one of the most important and fierce battles of WWII, Arturo’s family moved to Montreal, Canada, when he was still young. 

After an amateur career consisting of 86 bouts, including one memorable fight against Ireland’s Wayne McCullough in Derry in 1988 when he was just 16, Gatti turned pro at 19 in 1991, deciding to forego the opportunity of representing Canada at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. 

He moved across the border to base himself in New Jersey and lost just one of his first 30 pro contests. Along the way he picked up the IBF super featherweight title in 1997 against Tracy Harris Patterson in Atlantic City, which he vacated after two defences to move up to lightweight.

By this point, Gatti was a huge fan favourite. As a pure boxer, sharpshooting on the outside with either hand, he was a joy to watch, while on the inside he was so explosive and aggressive it was hard to imagine him taking second place to King Kong.

Gatti found success at lightweight but not at welterweight — he moved up to take on Oscar De La Hoya in 2001, losing by TKO. Moving down to light welterweight thereafter, he clinched the vacant WBC title against Gianluca Branco of Italy in 2004.

But all that aside, it’s the previously mentioned trilogy with “Irish” Micky Ward that Arturo Gatti is most known for — and no wonder, given the limits both fighters reached and crossed time and again in the course of a three-fight war in which no quarter was sought or given.

The first and most epic instalment of the trilogy was their first fight. It took place on May 18 2002 at the decidedly non-boxing venue of Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. Watching ringside was UK boxing writer Tris Dixon. In his book The Road to Nowhere he writes of the fight: “Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward tore into one another like lions quarrelling over a steak.” Also at ringside commentating on the fight was famed trainer Emanuel Steward, who was moved to proclaim the ninth round as “the round of the century.”

Watching that ninth round again now summons feelings of awe at the sheer immensity of will each fighter called on from who knows where. Ward scored a knockdown with a left hook to Gatti’s body early in the round, after which it looked only a matter of time before the former ended the issue by stoppage.

But even though he spent the next thirty seconds tottering like a building whose foundations had just been rocked by an earthquake, Gatti refused to succumb in the midst of the torrent of leather being showered down on him by his opponent. At the very point where you thought the referee was about to step in and wave it over, the Canadian began throwing back like a man who’d entered that “boiler room of the damned” Mailer described and was intent on dragging Ward down there with him.

Micky Ward won that legendary first contest of the trilogy by a tight split decision, but Gatti went on to win the next two by unanimous decision.  

Afterwards both men forged a close bond and friendship, the kind that can only be forged in pain. Of the Canadian after he died, Ward lamented: “We were supposed to grow old together, telling war stories.”

Gatti’s untimely death at 37 shocked the world of boxing. It did not shock some of those who were closest to him, however. Foul play rather than suicide was suspected by many, but Gatti’s older brother Joe – himself a former pro – was sure that Arturo decided to end his life that night. “He was on drugs, he was on painkillers, and he was an alcoholic,” he said in an interview on the circumstances surrounding his brother’s death. “That night in Brazil, he was in a dark place.”

Fighters are people who straddle two extremes. The extreme highs of being in the spotlight, of being revered by millions and experiencing the personal validation that comes with success. And the extreme lows that all too often stalk them into retirement, when meaning and purpose is lost.

Arturo Gatti was one of boxing’s most exciting and at the same time most tragic figures. What other sport is it that produces such incredibly brave and incredibly cursed men? It would take a Shakespeare or a Dostoevsky to help us understand.

Meanwhile, in other news, the revelation that Tyson Fury and others in his camp have tested positive for Covid reminds us that even world heavyweight champions are not immune from the virus.

Las Vegas, where Fury is currently based training for his third clash with Wilder, originally scheduled for July 24, abandoned all Covid restrictions on June 1.

The result is that a new date will have to be scheduled for the fight, with talk of late October being mentioned. Eddie Hearn, sensing an opportunity, has thrown his own hat into the ring (pun intended), with the offer of Dillian Whyte fighting Wilder on July 24 in Fury’s place.

Whatever the outcome, this development confirms that Covid is far from over, no matter how much we may wish it so.