Gatti Busts Damgaard and Hand

ATLANTIC CITY, NJ - Arturo Gatti battered Thomas Damgaard of Denmark on Saturday night en route to an 11th-round TKO at Boardwalk Hall.

Arturo Gatti pulled out some new tricks to go along with his old-fashioned toughness. The right-handed welterweight resorted to a left-handed stance Saturday night, steering clear of his toe-to-toe tendencies to stop previously unbeaten Damgaard.

"I went to southpaw because southpaw was working," Gatti said. "I was landing my right uppercut."

Fighting at 147 pounds for the first time in five years, Gatti, 40-7 effectively switched in and out of the left-handed stance throughout the bout. He connected on some of his best punches with left-hand leads to confound the left-handed Damgaard, 37-1, who was fighting for the first time outside of his native Denmark.

Gatti hurt his oft-injured right hand when he crashed it into Damgaard's head in the fourth round. But he kept throwing it and said afterward the switch to southpaw was a matter of strategy, not a pain-saving trick.

Damgaard fought like a left-handed Micky Ward -- Gatti's opponent in a memorable trilogy from 2002-03. The Dane continually pressed the action and landed solid punches to Gatti's head on several occasions.

But Gatti's trainer, Buddy McGirt, warned him not to get into an alley fight, and Gatti took the advice.

"I started exchanging punches with him, but he was getting the better of the exchanges, so I went back to boxing," Gatti said.

It worked.

Damgaard landed his share of solid punches, but Gatti refused to stand still.

The end came as a bloodied Damgaard, trying for a knockout punch, took a hard right to the face that left his legs wobbling beneath him, like those of a newborn colt. Referee Lindsey Page Jr. stepped in and stopped it at 2:54 of the 11th.

"I was hurt but I thought I could go the rest of the way," Damgaard said.

For Gatti, who planned to retire if he lost, the victory was sweet redemption.

Still stung by the beating he took at the hands of Floyd Mayweather in the 140-pound WBC championship here last June, the 33-year-old Hoboken brawler was out to prove himself.

"After the last fight, I had told myself I'd hang up the gloves no matter how difficult it is" if Damgaard beat him, Gatti said.

Damgaard looked as though he was about to take control in the fourth round, landing a series of left-right combinations that snapped Gatti's head back.

But Gatti rallied after that, relying on off-hand leads and his superior quickness to catch Damgaard. He landed seven unanswered punches during one stretch of the fifth round, prompting the partisan home-state crowd of 11,568 in Boardwalk Hall to break into their customary chants of "Gat-ti! Gat-ti!"

By the 11th, Damgaard was desperate, at one point holding the back of Gatti's head with his right hand and punching him several times with his left, which prompted Page to penalize him one point.

Gatti said he hopes to challenge newly crowned WBC champion Carlos Baldomir next. Baldomir upset Zab Judah to win that title earlier this month.

On the undercard, unbeaten featherweight Jason Litzau of St. Paul, Minn., stopped Carlos Contreras in the sixth round of a scheduled 10-rounder. The 22-year-old Litzau, 17-0 backed Contreras into the ropes and pinned him there with an onslaught of punches, with Contreras, 20-12-3 barely fighting back, prompting referee Michael Ortega to halt the fight at 1:17 of the sixth round.

Frank Santiago
New Jersey Correspondent

Information from other publications and wire services was used in the compilation of this report.