Boxing trainer Mike Skowronski honed his skills beside Arturo Gatti at Jersey City’s Ringside Gym and said the former champ’s longtime friends never liked Gatti’s wife — who is suspected of strangling him.
Skowronski, Gatti’s one-time stablemate, sparring mate and cornerman, said Amanda Rodrigues met the boxing great while working as a stripper in northern New Jersey and quickly became his business adviser and then his wife. Friends in the working-class area of Jersey City where Gatti paid his dues in the ring were suspicious of her motives, but didn’t want to offend him by pushing the matter.
“She tried to take over — she pushed him away from everybody,” Skowronski said on Tuesday. “I chose not to be around it, if you can imagine that, after being friends for 20 years. A lot of his friends did the same.”
PHOTO: REUTERS
Rodrigues, from Brazil, is accused of strangling Gatti with her purse strap as he drunkenly slept. Rodrigues told investigators she awoke on Saturday to find her husband’s body in the apartment they rented in Brazil. But police said she was the only suspect.
Ringside Gym is located along a rough-and-tumble truck route that snakes across northern New Jersey from the Holland and Lincoln tunnels out of New York City. Gatti was a wiry 17-year-old when he joined his older brother Joseph there in 1989.
The Gattis lived on one side of the truck route in boxing guru Mario Costa’s single-family home and ate breakfast each morning in his White Mana diner. They trained on the other side of the truck route in his second-floor boxing gym, eating dinner in the Ringside Lounge below.
PHOTO: AP
Regulars recalled Gatti on Tuesday as a great kid who never forgot the working-class neighborhood.
“Everybody was his friend here,” said Nunzi D’elia, 73. “He basically grew up here. We’re taking it real hard.”
Bartender Manuel Montiro said: “He wasn’t fancy. It hurts, especially the way he died.”
Gatti considered the area home and returned often even after becoming a world champion.
The bar is festooned with his fight posters and trophies.
Costa still laughs about the time he found a bruised and battered Gatti eating cheeseburgers and Philly cheesesteak sandwiches at White Mana the morning after a big fight in Atlantic City. Gatti had starved himself to make weight for the bout and said he’d been dreaming of the diner for days.
“What hurts is that he was by himself when he died, with nobody to protect him, because he was loved by so many people around here,” Costa said on Tuesday.
Everyone has a Gatti story at Ringside. Costa likes to remember the starry-eyed teen who followed him around when he visited Montreal, begging for a chance.
Ricky Roman, 32, remembers sneaking away to neighborhood basketball courts with Gatti so the tough Canadian could break out the boxing gloves and give the local kids a shot. Gatti was small, but powerful. He also had “heavy hands,” boxing lingo for knockout power.
Skowronski, 38, remembered Gatti as a prankster with a penchant for pulling down the shorts of other boxers. He also recalled how hurt the teenage Gatti was by his father’s premature death. It was a source of strength for a boxer renowned for his courage, who was always trying to measure up to his old man’s exacting standards.
Skowronski said he would play football with Gatti when they were teenagers, even though he hated the sport, which is a big deal in his friend’s Quebec.
“I loved him,” Skowronski said. “I’d stand in the net and play goalie.”
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
Marcus Rashford’s first goals for Aston Villa on Sunday inspired a 3-0 win against Preston North End that sent his side into the FA Cup semi-finals for the first time in 10 years. Rashford struck twice in the second half at Deepdale to end Preston’s stubborn resistance before Jacob Ramsey wrapped up Villa’s long-awaited return to the last four. Villa are to face Crystal Palace — 3-0 winners at Fulham on Saturday — in the semi-finals at Wembley Stadium in London. Revitalized since joining Villa on loan from Manchester United during the January transfer window, Rashford is beginning to show the form that