On the same night his once-loyal subjects were jeering Prince Naseem Hamed out of the London Arena for a yawn-inducing performance in his comeback bout against Manuel Calvo a pair of blue-collar boxers named Irish Micky Ward and Arturo Gatti brought along their shovels and lunch pails and went to work on an Indian Reservation in Connecticut.
No title was at stake, apart from, perhaps, that of "bravest man on the planet," and their combined purses would not have matched what either Hamed was paid on the same night, but over an electrifying 10 rounds the two blood-and-guts warriors put on a show of such frightening intensity that it will remain indelibly etched in the minds of those privileged enough to have witnessed it.
In 89 aggregate professional fights neither had ever taken a step backward, and since there was no reason to suppose they would on this night at the Mohegan Sun Arena, either, boxing insiders had looked forward to their encounter with undisguised anticipation. Everyone expected to see a very good fight; what they got was one for the ages.
It was a see-saw battle waged with such fury that even when it was over most ringsiders couldn't agree who had won, but there was a unanimous consensus that neither man deserved to lose. In the end, Ward was declared the winner on a narrow majority decision: a point deducted by referee Frank Cappuccino in the fourth round (after a stray Gatti punch caught Ward squarely between the legs), coupled with Ward's left hook to the body that put Gatti on the canvas in the ninth provided the razor-thin margin of victory.
Ward had developed a nasty cut above his right eye a minute into the fight, and Gatti looked afterward like a man who'd been dragged face-first along a railroad track. Both boxers wound up in hospital afterwards. When the fear was voiced that they might encounter one another and resume hostilities right there in the emergency room, Gatti trainer Buddy McGirt laughed and said "Naw, they'll probably put them in a room together so they can watch the Celtics and the Nets tomorrow."
A frenetic fifth round was briefly a candidate for "Round of the Year" until it was surpassed by the ninth. In both, Ward staggered Gatti badly toward the end and appeared on the verge of taking him out, only to have the bell intervene.
In fact, for the last half-minute of the ninth (later described by HBO broadcaster Jim Lampley as one of the three best he'd ever seen), McGirt was perched on the ring apron, apparently an eyeblink away from throwing in the towel. With Ward battering Gatti badly during this spell, Cappuccino could easily have stopped it himself, but didn't.
"Everybody knows I'm the comeback boy," the former IBF 130-lb champion offered his own explanation of the referee's reprieve.
Indeed, both participants had evinced a prior propensity for this sort of thing. Seven years ago, Ward had lost the first six rounds to a then-unbeaten Mexican named Alfonso Sanchez in Las Vegas before putting him down for a 10-count with one savage left to the body in the seventh. He was similarly trailing against Shea Neary at the Olympia in London two years ago before taking out the then-undefeated Liverpudlian in the eighth.
And Gatti is legendary for having climbed out of more coffins than Bela Lugosi.
"Arturo got out of his game plan," McGirt would say after this one. "He was in it and then out. He's got too much heart for his own good." Both men displayed an incredible willingness to absorb punshiment, as well as mete it out.
"The guy's like granite," said Ward. "I was tired. I thought I had him but he kept coming. I knew Gatti was going to be tough, but he was even tougher than that. I'm pretty banged up, and so is he, but that's what this is about. The fans saw what they expected. They got what they wanted."
"Gatti," agreed Ward's trainer and half-brother, the old welterweight Dickie Eklund, "is a warrior."
Statistics revealed that Ward and Gatti and punched one another an aggregate 618 times over 10 rounds - and those were just the ones that landed.
The final scorecards produced the mixed verdict, with Ward (38-11) edging Gatti (34-6), but who won and lost a fight like this seemed of small consequence. Clearly, both men felt honoured to have participated in a battle so glorious and brave, just as the 6,254 in attendance - a Connecticut casino record for boxing - felt somehow honoured to have witnessed it.
Minor controversies attended the aftermath. Cappuccino had allowed Gatti to remain on the canvas for an extraordinary length of time (21 seconds, claimed Eklund) before picking up the count for the ninth-round knockdown, and Gatti's promoter Gary Shaw moaned about the scorecard of Massachusetts judge Dick Flaherty, who scored the round 10-7 for Ward. (A 10-8 round would have produced a majority draw.)
"We'd love to fight Tszyu, but obviously, that's problematical," said Ward adviser (and former HBO executive) Lou DiBella, noting that the Russian-born, Australia-domiciled Kostya Tszyu, (the undisputed world light-welterweight champion), fights for HBO's rival Showtime. DiBella said that after a protracted (and deserved) period of recuperation, he might try to match Ward with IBF lightweight champion Paul Spadafora.
Boxing connoisseurs who had been salivating over this fight since the match had been made were not disappointed. It was everything it was supposed to be and more. And while a disappointed Gatti said he'd like to "do it again," there wasn't a great deal of enthusiasm for that proposal.
"Put it this way," said DiBella, "I wouldn't ask these guys to fight each other again for less than a million dollars apiece." (Ward earned a career-high $385,000 for Saturday night's work, Gatti approximately twice that.)
"Nobody," agreed Ward cutman Al Gavin, "should ever make these guys fight again. It takes too much out of both of them."
