IF STILL with us, Arturo Gatti would at 49 have been able to look back on one of the most spectacular and dynamic boxing careers of the modern era — a fighter revered by those old enough to have had the privilege of watching him in action in his prime, while also being held up by the current generation of fight fans as a throwback to a bygone era when fighters fought as much for pride as they did money.

Gatti’s untimely death at 37, by an apparent suicide in Brazil on July 10 2009, robbed boxing of a giant personality to match the giant heart and courage for which he was renowned in the ring. He was a deeply troubled man whose hardest fight, which he lost that fateful night in Brazil, was against his own demons.

In the ring he brought thunder and was part of perhaps the most thrilling and explosive trilogy of fights ever fought, against the equally legendary Micky Ward.