This is gonna be pretty cool......
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2004-01-14-gatti-ward_x.htm
Cool. Ward got the better of that trilogy, imo, even though the record disagrees with me
I thought Gatti was pretty damn decisive in fights 2 & 3 Jason, and I'm a huge Ward fan. Do you really think Ward won one of those fights, Jason?
Ward got 2 knockdowns in the 3rd one. I'm not saying he won it on points, I'm just saying that in the 3 fights Ward got 3 knockdowns, and Gatti got 1
I hear what your saying but Gatti is fighting for a "world title" and Ward is enjoying retirement now.
That being said I don't think Gatti will be the same after this trilogy. I like him over Branco but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a battle.
"I like him over Branco but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a battle."
Lo, that might be the safest bet ever made. What Gatti fight hasn't had it's "battle" moments?
"I hear what your saying but Gatti is fighting for a "world title" and Ward is enjoying retirement now"
True, but Ward was never KO'd, or even dominated like Gatti has been. And Ward is like 10 years older than Gatti, which is why he's retired and Gatti's not.
I'm not trying to sound like a know it all or anything like that, but I have 30 or 31 of Ward's fights on dvd, more than most of you guys have seen probably, and the man has more skill than most of the guys still active at that weight today. The only reason Micky Ward never won a title is that he was plagued by hand problems in both hands throughout his entire career.
Alot of people forget that Ward broke one of his hands in the third Gatti fight too. The difference is that Ward was still scoring knockdowns after that and Gatti was jabbing and running.
Not trying to knock Gatti at all, but in my mind Ward is clearly the better fighter. He was never KO'd, and the only time I really ever saw him lose a fight was against Harold Brasier. All of his other decision losses were more or less the result of him being afraid to throw because his hands were messed up before he even got in the ring that night.
Chadk when I say battle I mean this fight could be a little tougher than Gatti and his fans think it's gonna be.
Jason, skillwise I do think Gatti proved he was the better fighter. I love Ward but I've come to accept for what he is. He basically a one dimensional brawler with unbreakable will, a cast iron chin, & a debilatating hook the body.
Though I think Gatti's improvement under McGirt has been vastly overated he has gotten better. Just not as good as a lot of people think. I don't see Gatti as a top 5 jr. welterweight right noe but I do see him as a definate top ten guy worthy of a title shot.
"Jason, skillwise I do think Gatti proved he was the better fighter. I love Ward but I've come to accept for what he is. He basically a one dimensional brawler with unbreakable will, a cast iron chin, & a debilatating hook the body. "
That is not true at all. When Ward was just a promising prospect, he was actually a cute finesse type fighter that won alot of fights with his jab. He went 18-1 in his first 19 like that. He didn't become a brawler until midway through his career, and I've seen him be pretty slick in even some of his later fights.
Not that he didn't have a tendency to brawl, but its a mistake to think that he did that because he couldn't do anything else. When his hands were healthy, he could fight from the inside or outside. When they weren't, he was an in fighter who threw very few punches, like in his fight with Sanchez. But he threw so few because he couldn't throw many with his hands the way they were, not because he liked standing inside and soaking up punches.
If you watch his fights when his hand (or both of them) were messed up, and then watch his fights when they weren't, the difference is astonishing. He looks like a completely different boxer
Jason, that's interesting I need to check out some of Ward's earlier fights. The guys he was fighting in those first 20 fights weren't exactly world beaters. The first time I remember seeing Ward was on ESPN2 when it first came into existance back in 96.
no, they weren't world beaters, but my point was he didn't change styles until he had to because of his hand problems. He got to a point where he couldn't throw 130 punches a round anymore, which was about his average in his early fights, btw
Ward fought on ESPN in the 80's, before ESPN was around, I think.
Interesting piece of trivia:
Micky Ward's half brother, Dick, was also his trainer. Dick was a boxer back in the day, and fought Sugar Ray Leonard to a decision. Dick knocked Sugar Ray down in that fight, btw.
Anyhow, Dick had a drug problem at one time, and one day Dick got into a fight with some cops and Micky jumped in to help his brother out. Micky came out of the fight with a broken hand and a broken arm, and he had nothing but hand trouble after that. He eventually broke the other one too, probably because he threw so many more with it to compensate for his bad one.
He ended up taking 3 years off from boxing and getting his hand operated on, and when he came back he looked like a new man. He had stopped throwing certain kinds of punches, I guess because of the angle that they landed they were painful or something, and when he came back it was like he had learned a whole new style or something, because he was throwing stuff that he hadn't thrown in years. It was amazing.
So anyway, Ward's record is 38-13. He lost 6 of those in a row after he messed up his hand, which is when he retired, and he had one loss before he messed his hand up.
So after he got his hands fixed and came back, he lost 6 fights. 2 of those were to Gatti, and he scored 2 knockdowns in the second of those losses, so its hard for me to watch that fight and feel like he got beat, but whatever.
He lost to Vince Phillips on a cut, which could happen to anyone, and I thought the female doctor stopped that fight early anyhow. She didn't even let his corner work on the cut at all before she stopped it.
He lost to Jesse James Leija on a split decision after 5 rounds, because Leija was supposedly cut by a headbutt, but you can clearly see that it was a punch that did it, so Ward should really have won that fight by cut TKO.
He lost to Zab Judah by decision, and for some reason I can't remember the 6th loss right off.
So my point is, I think Zab and Vince would beat Gatti easily, and Ward didn't really lose to Leija, so I don't see how you can say Gatti is the better fighter. Gatti has been stopped, and Ward hasn't except for the cut against Phillips. Gatti has been knocked down alot more than Ward too. So Ward is the more durable fighter, at least.
just to add something to the above, I watched Ward's 9th, 10th, and 11th pro fights last night. Back then he was known for 2 things: Being Dick Ecklund's brother, and for switching stances constantly. No mention of his left hook at all really. He used the overhand right and uppercuts more than he used the left hook, and when he threw the left it was usually to the head. Also, they were talking about him being a champion as soon as the post fight interview from his 9th fight.
Then I watched like his 20th pro fight, or something around that, and they were talking alot about his left hook by that point, but still in terms of it being to the head, not the body