SAO PAULO -- Former boxing champion Arturo Gatti, one of the most exciting fighters of his generation, was found dead in a hotel room in the posh seaside resort of Porto de Galihnas early Saturday.

Police investigator Edilson Alves told The Associated Press that the body of the former junior welterweight champ was discovered in his hotel room at the tourist resort, where Gatti had arrived on Friday with his Brazilian wife Amanda and 1-year-old son.

Alves said police were investigating and it was unclear how the 37-year-old Canadian died. Foul play is suspected in the death, the CBC reported.

"It is still too early to say anything concrete, although it is all very strange," Alves said.

A spokeswoman for the state public safety department said Gatti's wife and son were unhurt. The women declined to give a name in keeping with department policy.

"There were no bullet or stab wounds on his body, but police did find blood stains on the floor," she said.

Brazilian boxer and four-time world champion Acelino "Popo" Freitas told the G1 Web site of Brazil's largest television network Globo that he was a close friend of Gatti and his wife, and that he "knew they were having some sort of problem and were about to separate, but I didn't know they were in Brazil."

Francisco Assis, a local police investigator, told G1 that Gatti could have died up to eight hours before his body was found early Saturday.

Gatti (40-9, 31 KOs), nicknamed "Thunder", was best known for his all-action style, which was epitomized in his classic trilogy with Micky Ward in 2002 and 2003.

It's why Gatti was a fixture at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J., where he drew huge crowds and fought many times, including the final nine fights of his career.

"His entire boxing career he fought with us, we've known him since he was 17," Kathy Duva of promoter Main Events told The Associated Press. "It's just an unspeakable tragedy. I can't even find words. It's a horror."

He won two world titles in his 16-year pro career. In 1995, he won his first one, outpointing Tracy Harris Patterson to claim the IBF junior lightweight title.

In his first fight after the Ward trilogy -- which Gatti won 2-1 -- he captured a world title in his second division, outpointing Gianluca Branco for the vacant WBC junior welterweight title in January 2004.

Gatti made two defenses before losing the title to Floyd Mayweather Jr. via sixth-round TKO in June 2005. He returned to defeat Thomas Damgaard but lost his final two bouts, a ninth-round TKO in a challenge to then-welterweight champion Carlos Baldomir in July 2006 followed by a one-sided beating from former "Contender" star Alfonso Gomez in July 2007.

In the dressing room following the seventh-round knockout loss to Gomez, Gatti announced his retirement.

Referee Randy Neumann said it was tough for him to end that fight, simply because of Gatti's incredible ability to come back in fights.

"I couldn't stop that fight, simply because he was Arturo Gatti," Neumann said. "He was much more dignified to go out that way. He had to be counted out. When he fought, you never knew if he could come back. He looked beaten and still came back."

With that loss, Gatti acknowledged the end of all his travails and triumphs.

"I remember walking away from his last fight, and somebody walked up to him in the casino late at night and congratulated him," Duva said. "And he said, 'Why did he congratulate me?' And I said, 'He was excited to meet you.' And he kind of looked very surprised by that.

"He had no idea what an icon he was or how much he meant to people."

More than his titles, Gatti will be remembered for the slugfests. He was half of the Ring magazine fight of the year four times for two the Ward fights as well as his 1997 fifth-round knockout of Gabriel Ruelas to retain the junior lightweight title and a 1998 decision loss to Ivan Robinson.

Gatti had two memorable battles with Robinson as well as dramatic fights with Wilson Rodriguez, Angel Manfredy and Calvin Grove -- all before the trilogy with Ward that defined his career.

Gatti was a staple of HBO's boxing broadcasts, appearing on the network 21 times.

"HBO Sports is tremendously saddened by the passing of Arturo Gatti," HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg said. "He was one of the legendary warriors in boxing, and his three epic battles with Micky Ward will live on in the sport's rich history. All of us at HBO Sports will miss his warm and friendly presence, and our deepest sympathy goes out to his manager Pat Lynch, promoter Main Events, led by Kathy Duva, and the entire Arturo Gatti family. Boxing has lost a great and humble man."

Gatti had been working in real estate in Montreal following his retirement, but still attended fights, as he did in April for the Timothy Bradley-Kendall Holt junior welterweight unification bout at the Bell Centre in Montreal.


His film credits include 'The All-American Boy' and 'Little Fauss and Big Halsy.'
By Dennis McLellan
July 10, 2009
LA Times
Charles Eastman, a playwright and screenwriter whose credits included the 1970s films "The All-American Boy" and "Little Fauss and Big Halsy," has died. He was 79.

Eastman, the brother of the late "Five Easy Pieces" screenwriter Carole Eastman, died July 3 of complications from heart disease at Brotman Medical Center in Culver City, said Dave Schultz, a friend.

A Hollywood native, Eastman began writing in the late 1950s and had several of his plays produced by Los Angeles little theater groups beginning in the early '60s.

He launched his screenwriting career in the mid-'60s as an uncredited script doctor on films such as "The Americanization of Emily," "The Cincinnati Kid" and "This Property Is Condemned."

A decade later, a Times writer described Eastman during the '60s as "a gifted and eccentric writer who turned down offers by major studios and stars to option his original screenplays unless he could direct them himself."

However, Sidney J. Furie wound up directing Eastman's original screenplay for "Little Fauss and Big Halsy," a 1970 movie starring Robert Redford as a motorcycle racer.

"The All-American Boy," a 1973 film about a promising small-town boxer starring Jon Voight, was Eastman's first -- and only -- film credit as a director.

His third and final screenwriting credit was "Second-Hand Hearts," a 1981 film directed by Hal Ashby and starring Robert Blake and Barbara Harris. It was based on Eastman's one-act play "The Hamster of Happiness," which aired on "NBC Experiment in Television" in 1968.

Screenwriter Robert Towne, who met Eastman in the '60s, recalled how impressed he was by an early Eastman screenplay that never made it to the big screen: "Honeybear,I Think I Love You," the story of a disturbed young man's obsession with a girl.

"For me, it was quite a revelation because it was the first contemporary screenplay I had read that just opened up the possibilities of everything that you could put into a screenplay in terms of language and the observations of contemporary life," Towne said this week.

"It was a stunning piece of work, and I think it influenced a lot of us, even though it wasn't made," Towne said. "Everybody tried to get it made, but Charlie was very particular about how it was going to be made, and in some ways I think he kept it from being made.

"Charlie was an original, that's all. He used language in a way that I hadn't seen used before."

Towne said Eastman was "very particular, very quirky, very much like his sister," who wrote "Five Easy Pieces," starring Jack Nicholson, under the pen name Adrien Joyce.

"I think she was writing about Charlie in some ways," said Towne. "Charlie was just one of those shadowy figures that I think cast a longer shadow over most of us than was generally recognized."

One of four children, Eastman was born Sept. 18, 1929, into a family employed in the movie business: His father was a grip at Warner Bros. and his mother was Bing Crosby's longtime secretary.

As a young teenager, Eastman acted in little theater. While attending Los Angeles City College, he worked as a film extra and had a stint as a stand-in for Jerry Lewis. He later worked in the script departments of NBC and CBS.

Among Eastman's plays are "The UnAmerican Cowboy" and "Busy Bee Good Food All Night Delicious."

He also wrote short stories, including "Yellow Flags," which was published in Atlantic Monthly and included in the 1993 "O. Henry Prize Stories."

Since undergoing a quadruple heart bypass several years ago, Eastman wrote three screenplays that so far are unproduced.

"Charlie just sat in front of a computer every day and wrote," said Schultz. "It was his life."

Eastman, whose sister died in 2004, had no immediate surviving family members.