It is billed as Thunder and Lightning, a play on the contrasting styles that make Arturo Gatti vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. for the WBC super lightweight championship such an appealing fight. But truth is, a big uncertainty surrounding Saturday night’s sold-out showdown (9:00, HBO PPV, $44.95) at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City is what style we’ll see from Gatti, the boxer-turned-slugger-turned boxer.
Logical thinking might suggest you don’t try to outbox one of the best boxers on the planet, especially if you’re a fighter like Gatti, who built his reputation on rugged, blood-filled brawls before reverting to more of a hit-and-not-be-hit approach under trainer Buddy McGirt.
But Gatti and McGirt insist they don’t have to bring all thunder to beat the unbeaten Mayweather. Said McGirt: “We won’t have to go back to the killer attitude.”
Without revealing the entire game plan, McGirt summed up Gatti’s approach this way: “Most guys when they fight Floyd, they sit in front of him and try to match him speed for speed. That’s the worst thing you can do. You can’t sit in front of Floyd. A lot of guys try to hit him on the chin. You’ll never hit him on the chin. The key is to hit him everywhere, but the bottom of his feet.”
Roger Mayweather, Floyd’s uncle and trainer, sees the fight evolving much like the popular boxing movie Rocky. “This is a remake of Sylvester Stallone and Apollo Creed,” he said. “It’s going to be an unedited version.”
Sift through the rhetoric and the fight might go something like this: Gatti will apply early pressure trying to get to Mayweather’s body, while Mayweather will try to pepper Gatti’s face with jabs and combinations. If Gatti can get to Mayweather’s body often enough, it might neutralize his speed and make it more of a brawl. If Mayweather can bust up Gatti’s face, the fight might be stopped on cuts or a TKO. Neither fighter sees it going the 12-round distance.
Gatti: “He’s going to visit the canvas. That’s a guarantee.” Mayweather: “It won’t go 12.”
Under McGirt’s tutelage since 2002, Gatti (39-6, 30 KOs) has reinvented himself as more of a technician, a change that wasn’t fully in place until after his brutal trilogy with Micky Ward. He has since recorded cut-free wins against Gianluco Branco (where he won the WBC super lightweight title), Leonard Dorin and Jesse James Leija. None of those fighters has the hand speed and ring skills of Mayweather (33-0, 22 KOs).
“He’s the best fighter we’ve faced,” McGirt admitted. “There’s no denying that. And he’s the best fighter that we’re going to beat.”
Mayweather, a world champion at super featherweight and lightweight, hasn’t been down and hasn’t really been in a tough fight, though his list of victims includes Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo. He doesn’t expect to have a whole lot of trouble with Gatti.
“I’m the dictator,” he said. “If I want to turn it into a slugfest, it’s going to be a slugfest. If I want to turn it into a boxing fest, it’s going to be a boxing fest.”
