Gatti was one of the first guys to put on heaps of weight post weigh in, I remember one fight he was a full 14 pounds heavier at fight time a lot for a guy in his weight division, remember it became an issue after one of his fights he won by KO
Yeah, that was his KO of Joey Gamache.
Gamache was a protected fighter who was brilliantly maneuvered into championship belts in two divisions. Built up a nice padded record. Won vacant titles against unworthy No.1 contenders whose rankings were bought and paid for.
Anyway Gamache was 44-2. A really pristine record built against journeymen and a former 2 division world champion and the only people he ever fought that were any good at all, beat him by ko. Further, Gamache was flashy but wasn't really ready for prime time. While Gatti was a superstar who was all prime-time win, lose or draw.
Gatti and Gamache were both pretty muscular for their weight division but after the weigh-in Gatti blew up 14 lbs! (I actually seem to remember it being more) and he didn't have an ounce of fat to spare. He looked like a monster compared to Gamache and truth be told it was pretty well understood that Gatti would ko Gamache unless the latter had the fight of his life and the former was just totally shot, but when the weights were announced, everyone knew it was going to be a near tragedy.
And Gatti knocked Gamache's brains into orbit. Pretty sure it was round 2. Gamache looked like he was having a siezure or in rigor mortis.
Just a few years later Gamache started to show signs of Parkinsons/pugilistic dementia and sued HBO/promoter/boxing commissions for allowing the Gatti fight to go on. I don't remember if he won the lawsuit, but it led to clauses being put into weigh ins that only allowed boxers to gain so many pounds between the weigh in and the fights.
I don't know if Gamache actually had dementia. He really only took abuse in the Gatti fight. The rest of his fights were pretty tame. Even the ones he lost. Gamache and his manager had reputations as frauds, phonies.
