Baldomir Knocks Gatti's Block Off

ATLANTIC CITY, NJ - Carlos Baldomir beat Montreal native Arturo Gatti at his own game, and may have ended the popular fighter's career.

Criticized for not having the punching power to handle Gatti's street-brawling style, Baldomir tattooed him with a steady stream of punches that culminated in a ninth-round knockout Saturday night in Baldomir's first defence of his WBC welterweight title.

The Argentine journeyman silenced a sellout crowd that had come to see Gatti, one of Atlantic City's most popular fighters, but the Jersey City resident was outclassed from the start.

Afterward, Gatti (40-8) didn't take questions from reporters but said, "I don't know if I'm ever going to fight again. I had a good time doing it."

Gatti had said in January that he would have retired if he had lost to unbeaten Dane Thomas Damgaard. But his performance in beating Damgaard and his desire to win a belt in a third weight class - he won the IBF junior lightweight title in 1995 and the WBC junior welterweight belt two years ago - changed his mind.

It wasn't enough against Baldomir (43-9-6), who was fighting for the first time since stunning Zab Judah on Jan. 7 to win the WBC belt. He pummelled Gatti through the first five rounds and sent him to the canvas twice in the final round after hemming him in on the ropes and savaging him with a flurry of punches.

By midway through the fight, Gatti had cuts on his lip and under his right eye, and by the middle of the fifth round, appeared dazed.

"I did say that I was a stronger puncher than Gatti before the fight and I could tell in the first two or three rounds that I was," Baldomir said. "The punches Gatti was throwing didn't hurt me at all. When he put his left hand down, I just knew I could hit him with the right."

Gatti rallied in the middle rounds and appeared to have gotten a foothold in the fight until the ninth round, although he was trailing on all three judges' cards through eight rounds.

"I tried to box him," Gatti said. "He's just very strong, and he was getting stronger as the fight went on. He had my style down. He's a strong guy. I guess I just tried too hard to knock him out early."

Baldomir held an edge in punches landed with 267 of 562 (48 per cent) compared to 36 per cent (161-of-445) for Gatti.

The sellout crowd of 12,763 left no doubt as to who it was favouring, chanting "Ga-tti! Ga-tti!" when the challenger entered the arena and loudly booing Baldomir when he was introduced.

Both fighters wasted little time measuring each other after the opening bell. Gatti landed an overhand left and a left hook to Baldomir's face, but also absorbed several hard shots.

At times Gatti alternated between right- and left-handed stances, a strategy he used effectively in his win in January against Damgaard. But as the fight wore on, he largely abandoned the ploy.

Baldomir began to gain the upper hand in the third round as he landed first two left hooks and then two hard rights followed by a combination. The round ended with Baldomir again catching Gatti with a combination of head and body punches.

Midway through the round Baldomir even appeared to taunt Gatti, pointing to his stomach as if to challenge Gatti to hit him there.

Now it is Baldomir who will try to unify the title. He could have done that when he beat Judah, but he failed to pay the sanctioning fees to the WBA and IBF, and thus holds only the WBC belt.

"Now it is up to the public to see that I am the real champion," Baldomir said.

On the undercard, Giovanni Lorenzo (21-0) remained undefeated when he stopped Bryon Mackie (27-13) of Orangeville, Ont., in the sixth round of a scheduled 10-round junior middleweight bout.

The impressive win by Lorenzo moved the New Yorker closer to a possible title shot against WBC middleweight champ Jermain Taylor. Whether he gets to fight Taylor depends on the Taylor camp's negotiations with Sergio Mora, winner of NBC's reality show The Contender last year.

Frank Santiago
New Jersey Correspondent

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