GATTI WINS TRILOGY OVER WARD
By Ron Brashear
Inside Boxing Writer/Columnist

(IB – June 7 2003) – In the 3rd and final fight between Arturo “Thunder” Gatti (36-6, 28 KOs) and “Irish” Micky Ward (38-13, 27 KOs), Gatti was able to overpower and out-box Ward to win a unanimous decision (96-93, 96-93, and 97-92) in their 10 round Jr. Welterweight bout.

Amazingly enough, this fight did live up the hype and both fighters, once again, granted the fans a treat to what true “machismo” is all about. A toe-to-toe slugfest…

While Ward was being truly dominated by Gatti’s hand-speed, crisp combinations and foot-speed, Micky did show that courage could close a wide gap in the level of talent between Gatti and himself.

The left hooks were even extra busy for Gatti this night as a result of damaging his right hand with a shot to the hip of Ward in the 4th round.

Despite being peppered with left hooks throughout the fight, Ward was able to mustard up a knock down of Gatti at the close of the 6th round. However, Gatti was able to re-establish control of the fight from the 7th round and onward with a busier output of punches.

After the fight, Ward said that Gatti was like “Jason” (Friday the 13th movie character), in that he keeps coming back. Well Gatti may have just come back to championship level with this dominating performance. Perhaps Kostya Tszyu will pick up on the fact of how marketable Gatti is and grant him a shot at the title. That would surely be an entertaining fight to see.

Co-feature bout:

In a heavyweight bout, Michael Grant (38-3, 29 KOs) was KO’ed in seven rounds by undefeated Dominick Guinn (22-0, 17 KOs) and appeared very amateurish and passive while being knocked down 4 times during the fight. If Teddy Atlas is going to preserve any stature as being a good trainer, he may want to distant himself from Grant. The way Grant drops his right hand anytime he is in close, while leaving himself wide open for the short left hooks, gives the impression that he really is in need of a trainer to improve his fundamental boxing skills and so far, that is not happening.

Based on what I saw, Grant’s lack of skills can only cause more problems for him in the future if he chooses to continue with the sport of boxing.

You have just gone insideboxing.com

Ron Brashear can be contacted at brashear@insideboxing.com, ron@brasheargear.com