Arturo Gatti perhaps burned brighter than any fighter of his time. So many times, “Thunder” struck, sending fans into a frenzy, with them craving more upon leaving the arena or after having tuned in on TV. The kind of undiluted, intoxicating, raw fight action Gatti thrilled us with multiple times is rare, and we all rate Gatti somewhere in our top 10 most exciting fighters list. Plenty of people have Gatti ranked at #1.
Sadly as we know, Gatti’s meteoric life ended in tragedy, his dead body found 15 years ago this week (July 11, 2009). To this day, nobody agrees about what happened, whether it was suicide or murder. There are, sadly, almost as many videos on YouTube concentrating on Gatti’s mysterious death as there are videos that continue to celebrate Gatti’s many classic, indeed epic, ring battles.
Gatti was just 37 years of age when he died, and so many people who know him best – be it from having shared the ring with him to having known Gatti all his life – refuse to accept the official verdict of suicide. We have heard it many times since 2009: Gatti was “no quitter.” Gatti “would never have given in and taken the easy way out.” Maybe not.
But Gatti was having his problems over the last months of his life. Said by some to be “constantly depressed,” with Gatti suffering from headaches and being addicted to alcohol and drugs, both recreational and prescription; Gatti was also having problems with his wife, Amanda. The couple was witnessed arguing bitterly on numerous occasions, their relationship even becoming physical at times, with Gatti being “a completely different man when he was drinking,” according to his wife.
The couple were in Brazil when the tragedy occurred. On a second honeymoon, Gatti said he had been trying his best to “save the marriage.” Gatti got drunk on the final night of his life – “again,” as Amanda said – and he and his wife got into a nasty argument in public. Gatti, Amanda said, pushed her to the floor, before grabbing their 10-month old child, Gatti catching a taxi and leaving Amanda at the scene. Minutes later, Gatti returned, looking for his wife. The crowd of people was still there, and some of them were angry at Gatti for what he did to his wife. Gatti is said to have gotten into a fight with “four guys.” Gatti, at some point during the fight, suffered a bad cut to the back of his head, with him perhaps being struck by a rock or even a bicycle!
Later, still, with Gatti having more or less sobered up, the two met back at the condo in which they were staying in Porto de Galinhas. This was around 2AM. Gatti saw the look in his wife’s eyes, and he said, “I guess it’s over, huh?” Amanda told Gatti that, yes, it was over.
Amanda had a cut to the bottom of her chin, as seen in photos, and she had an abrasion on her arm. Gatti, she said, asked him, “Who did that to you?”
In the early hours of the morning, Gatti was found dead by Amanda, supposedly having taken his own life by hanging, the former superstar fighter said to have used his wife’s purse strap to hang himself with. Gatti was laid face-down in a pool of blood.
There was, according to Brazilian authorities on the scene, a knife lying nearby. The question at the time was, why didn’t Amanda call the police as soon as she saw her husband prostrate on the floor instead of going back to bed? The answer from the chief suspect in the death replied that she simply felt her husband had passed out “as he had done many times.”
Amanda, by her own recollection, saw Gatti’s prostrate body but “thought nothing of it,” with Amanda also saying on the “48 Hours” documentary that “there was no blood at that time.” She then returned to the death scene two hours later, this time touching the body and realizing Gatti was dead.
Initially, Amanda was arrested for murder. Three weeks later, however, she was released, the official verdict being suicide.
But 15 years later, the numerous questions persist:
How had the purse string, one that snapped after a mere five seconds during attempts to recreate the hanging with a dummy that weighed the same as Gatti, held Gatti’s weight for a long enough amount of time for him to die?
Also, how did Gatti’s body fall “sideways underneath the stairs” when the purse strap snapped, instead of his body falling “straight onto that table (that was directly underneath the supposed hanging site)?”
Why did Gatti have a muscle relaxant drug in his system, as discovered in the autopsy?
Why did Amanda appear to show no emotion other than happiness upon being released from prison – “coming out…….these big glasses like she’s a movie star, with a smile from ear to ear,” as Gatti’s lawyer, John Lynch, described Amanda’s appearance.
Would Gatti have killed himself without leaving a note?
Why did Gatti change his will just three weeks before his death, leaving everything to his wife?
Then there are also questions that could be put to those people who do not accept the suicide verdict:
Was Gatti suffering from CTE, a shrinking of the brain?
Was Gatti depressed and unable to live a normal life after having retired from the ring, and was Gatti also “in constant pain?”
Was Gatti “in a dark place that night in Brazil,” as Gatti’s brother Joe says? “I just hate to say it, but it came to this: people need to know the truth. He was on drugs. He was on painkillers. And he was an alcoholic,” Joe Gatti says in the documentary “48 Hours.”
Was Gatti indeed suicidal?
All we know for sure is this: the world lost a great, great fighter 15 years ago under tragic and also murky circumstances. Gatti gave his all as a fighter, and he may have paid an unimaginable, unknown price for having done so, ultimately leading to his death by suicide, the old Gatti having been devoured. Perhaps Gatti’s brain and body gave too much. As one of his friends says of Gatti in the “48 Hours” film, “he was just not himself” at the end.
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