Speaking of punishment absorbed after fights, I came across this
story not too long ago.
Less than an hour after 12,643 witnesses to their shared madness had stood and roared their approval for what they'd just done to each other for 10 rounds, the only sound either fighter heard was the constant beep of the heart monitors they were hooked up to in the Atlantic City Medical Center emergency room.
Occasionally, one or the other spoke, but not often and not loudly.
There wasn't much to say, nor much energy to say it. At one point, Gatti turned to a friend who sat next to his gurney, and said through badly swollen and discolored lips, "I wish I was better at golf." Then he laughed. She replied, "I do, too." She didn't laugh.
Barely a foot away lay Ward, who had fought his last fight to the final moment with double vision inflicted upon him by his close friend that would not be repaired for more than a year. He looked better than Gatti did, which is to say he did not look very good at all. Ward's forehead had a huge red lump in the middle of it, as if Gatti had drilled him with one of the golf balls they both like to hit, often wildly, when together on Florida golf courses. A cut above his left eye had been stitched up but a thin red line of dried blood ran down from the tip of it to his temple. No one thought to wipe it off, least of all Ward, who was too exhausted and sore.
His face was red with welts and one cheek looked like someone had run a plane over it a couple of times, sheering the skin raw. His right hand was discolored from the knuckle half way up his finger and both hands were bumpy, bruised and an angry blue.
Ward's chest had four monitors stuck on it. Another was attached to a finger. Occasionally he smiled at his fiancee and talked softly to a friend about what he had just endured. He didn't try to describe it. How do you describe being in three car wrecks with the same driver? How do you describe doing this to each other for 30 rounds? How do you explain to a civilian what the warrior's life is like or why you live it? Most simply, how do you explain that the two of you are friends?
Instead, you make small talk. You say you did your best and you talk about your respect for the other guy. It was what Ward said about Gatti and Gatti said of Ward. They chatted from time to time until they pulled the blue screen closed between them so a doctor could stitch up one or the other of them. Both had cut eyes, bloody noses, faces puffed and scraped.
Gatti's face was disfigured in a way that would have surprised Ward's 14-year-old daughter, who a week earlier had been asked by a New York Times reporter what she thought of the man her father had battled with such severe consequences twice already. She said she thought he was cute. Not after her father was done with him, he wasn't.
"Oh, that Micky Ward," Gatti said, admiration in his voice. "What heart he's got. Anybody else would have quit. Him? Every time I hurt him, he hit me harder. I got great respect for him but I'm glad I won't see him anymore."
People who pay to see such men fight have no idea what follows their hand-to-hand combat. Vaguely they understand there is pain and blood loss involved, but there is nothing concrete about it because the crowd doesn't follow them to the emergency room. They go alone or with a cornerman or family member. Or in the case of Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward they go with a friend - each other.
Outside, a siren screamed and a guy with a puncture wound was brought in. A fight breaks out in the waiting room between family members of the shooter and the shootee. A half-dozen cop cars show up to calm things down.
They could have come in handy when Ward and Gatti were assaulting each other, but they weren't there because the savagery the men engaged in was not only sanctioned by the state of New Jersey, it was taxed.
Ward laughed when a friend pointed that out then he reconfirmed the decision he made when the final fight of his brutal trilogy with Gatti was announced. "Some retirement party," he added.
On the other side of the thin blue cloth Arturo Gatti hears that and laughs. Then so does Micky Ward. Two friends, laughing through their pain.
For a moment the subject became more serious when Ward talked about a Gatti punch to the temple in the third round that left him seeing double.
His head still hurt enough that he was wheeled in for a CAT scan. When he came back he told Gatti, "They didn't find nothing in there. Why would they?"
They laughed again as hard as they could, which wasn't very hard because Ward's ribs ached and a few feet away Gatti lay wrapped in blankets from his chin to his toes. Even his arms were encased as they tried to raise his body temperature before putting a cast on the right hand he broke on Ward's hip in the fourth round.
