Sixteen years after the mysterious death of boxer Arturo ‘Thunder’ Gatti, has lightning struck twice?

In July 2009, former world boxing champion Arturo Gatti (pictured, left) was found dead while on holiday in Brazil, and suspicion fell on his wife Amanda, who was later cleared by the Brazilian police.

Then in October last year his 17-year-old son Arturo junior (right), an aspiring boxer, was found dead in spookily similar circumstances.

In today’s Substack I look in detail at both deaths and ask whether lightning has struck twice.

First, let me put my cards on the table.

I was a huge fan of Arturo “Thunder” Gatti and was devastated when I heard of his death, aged 37, just two years after he retired from the ring.

I’ve even got a t-shirt (pictured below) in honour of his infamous trilogy of fights with “Irish” Micky Ward, which includes one of the best rounds of boxing in the history of the sport (see clip below).

In May 2010, while working for the BBC, I had a brief spell when I moved temporarily from the newsroom to the sport team and during while there I pitched the idea of doing a feature about Gatti’s death.

It led to me writing this article, which contained an exclusive interview with Amanda Rodrigues Barbosa herself.

The couple were on holiday, with their 10-month-old son Arturo junior, in the seaside resort of Porto de Galinhas in Brazil’s Pernambuco state.

Rodrigues maintained Gatti must have committed suicide while in a drunken state.

That did not tally with what his family and friends in the boxing world knew of Gatti.

He was no quitter.

Take his third fight with Ward, in June 2003.

Gatti broke his hand in the fourth round and was knocked down in the sixth, but he gritted his teeth and grinded out a victory on points.

His long-time manager, Pat Lynch, told me: “Knowing his character, there is no way he is going to hang himself with a handbag strap with his baby son in the room.”

Referring to all three fights, Lynch said: “That went down in the history of boxing as one of the greatest trilogies, right behind Ali-Frazier.”

Rodrigues told me: “It is normal that the fans don’t believe in what happened because they only knew Arturo as a champion and warrior, and a true warrior never quits.”

“It is the same thing as telling a seven-year-old that Superman or Spiderman committed suicide,” she added.

Gatti’s brother Fabrizio said: “I know my brother better than his wife and there is no way he would have done that. He wasn’t depressed. He was planning to open two boxing gyms and he loved his son.”

“If he had died in a car accident or of a heart attack, I wouldn’t have bothered about the will but I don’t buy the idea that he committed suicide,” he added.

I remember seeing the crime scene photographs, which showed Gatti as he was found, by his wife, on 11 July 2009.

They showed him under the stairs of the couple’s holiday apartment, with a handbag strap tied around his neck and connected to the bannister.

It seemed a very unlikely way to commit suicide.

But the Brazilian police said there was no sign of forced entry, or any third party being in the apartment, and they obviously believed it was highly unlikely that Rodrigues herself could overpower the former boxer and throttle him.

Lynch though was not satisfied, and he hired pathologist Dr Michael Baden to conduct a second autopsy.

Although it was never published, Lynch told me: “The second autopsy discovered that, among other things, his Adam’s apple was fractured, which is consistent with strangling and not hanging.”

He also told me there were signs Gatti had been hit with a blunt weapon on the left side of his body and the back of his head, and he claimed the ligature mark on his neck did not match the handbag strap.

“There are so many unanswered questions,” Lynch told me in 2010.

Gatti was born in Italy but his immigrant parents brought him up in Montreal, Canada, before he became a boxer and turned pro in New Jersey in 1991.

In his second fight, he knocked out Luis Melendez in 19 seconds.

But in November 1992 Gatti lost his first fight, a tempestuous battle with a Philadelphia fighter who went by the name of King Solomon.

Gatti was knocked down in the first round, Solomon was down in round two, but ultimately he won a split decision.

But Gatti bounced back and would go on to become the darling of Atlantic City, the gambling mecca of the East Coast, where his style of fighting gained him the nickname of “Thunder” and a growing fanbase.

Lynch told me Gatti was “the ultimate warrior” who “would rather die in the ring than give up”.

Gatti won his first world title belt, the IBF superfeatherweight title, in 1995 and later fought two of the biggest names in boxing - Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather.

Between May 2002 and June 2003, came the Gatti-Ward trilogy which turned him into a boxing legend.

Coincidentally, in March 2000, I was at ringside at London’s Olympia when Ward – who was from Lowell, Massachusetts - defeated British fighter Shea Neary.

That fight is the climax of the movie, The Fighter, which stars Mark Wahlberg as Ward and Christian Bale as his brother and trainer Dicky.

Bale won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance.

Ward retired after the third fight with Gatti, but the Canadian fought on until 2007 when he finally hung up his gloves after being stopped by Argentina’s Carlos Baldomir.

Gatti and his Brazilian wife moved back to Montreal, and he started a property development business.

But Rodrigues told me that retirement and inactivity did not sit well with Gatti, who soon developed an alcohol problem, which he tried to hide from his family.

“I tried everything from rehab, AA meetings and church to save his life,” Rodrigues told me. “And I did. I did for the three years that we were together. My pain is for missing him, and NOT for feeling guilty.”

The couple almost broke up in May 2009 but they reconciled and in July that year went to Brazil for a “second honeymoon”.

She said that on his last night on Earth, he got drunk and they argued, before she went to bed.

The following morning she told me she discovered him.

“When I saw his face and his mouth I knew something was wrong. I started to cry, yell and call for help,” she told me. “I didn’t want to believe what was happening. I even started to tell Arturo that I forgave him and that I wanted him to stop playing.”

Since publishing that article in May 2010 I lost touch with Barbosa but I do know that two months later 2010 she sued two New York tabloids and Maxim magazine for defamation over stories they wrote which called her a former “stripper” and said she had met Gatti when he walked into a strip club in Weehawken, New Jersey.

Her lawyer claimed the articles “clearly accuse plaintiff in engaging in immoral activities, and/or pertain to the unchastity of a female” and had caused her “humiliation, embarrassment, and mental anguish”.

Perhaps I can consider myself lucky she did not sue me or the BBC, because I wrote that the pair met when was working at a lapdancing club.

I don’t know what became of the defamation lawsuits, but I do know she was successful in the Canadian courts.

In December 2011 Quebec Superior Court Justice Claudine Roy sided with Rodrigues and against the Gatti family and said she should inherit all his money.

Gatti’s mother Ida and his brother Fabrizio had sought to prevent her from inheriting Gatti’s C$3.4 million fortune.

But Justice Roy said there was no proof that Gatti’s last will, signed by him on 15 June 2009, shortly before his death, was not valid or that Rodrigues had manipulated him into changing it.

Rodrigues told CBC News: “I am so happy the judge saw my side.”

But she added: “I won the case, but I don’t feel like a winner. Arturo still isn’t here and his son does not have a father.”

In 2010 Rodrigues had told me: “Why is it so strange that Arturo left a will naming his wife and son? Isn’t that normal? Isn’t that what all husbands do?”

A year after the Quebec victory, Rodrigues had another legal success, this time in the United States.

In February 2012 a judge in New Jersey ruled that Erika Rivera – Gatti’s ex-girlfriend and mother of his eldest child, Sofia - could not sue Rodrigues for wrongful death.

Her lawyer, Mark Casazza, said: “Amanda is a young woman who tragically became a widow to her beloved husband and a single parent to their son, Arturo, Jr. What she has been forced to endure since her husband’s passing has been unthinkable. I hope now she can get the closure that she deserves.”

In 2010 Rodrigues had told me: “It is hard for me to watch Junior growing without his father enjoying it with me. Junior is more than a plan, he is a dream coming true for both Arturo and I. He is just like Arturo.”

That statement would prove to be sadly prophetic.

Young Arturo aspired to be a boxer like his father, and in September 2025 used AI to create an image (pictured above) on his Instagram page which showed him, as a boxer, embracing his father. Both fighters’ trunks bore the nickname “Thunder”.

A month later, Arturo junior was dead, aged 17.

The World Boxing Association issued a statement in which it said: “The WBA and the boxing world mourn the passing of Arturo Gatti Jr. His journey was just beginning, yet his spirit will live on — now reunited with his legendary father among the stars.”

Arturo junior had been living with his mother, Amanda Rodrigues Barbosa, in an apartment in a gated community in Cancun, Mexico.

It later emerged that Arturo junior had been found hanged, in a very similar way to how his father died.

Gatti senior’s former bodyguard and friend, Chuck Zito, posted a message on Instagram – which he later deleted - in which he said:

“It’s with a heavy heart that I have to say… R.I.P. to 17-year-old ARTURO GATTI JR.…The same way they found his father dead in an apartment in Brazil 16 years ago.”

So did his father’s death create such an immense shadow over his mental health, that he succumbed and ended up repeating the tragedy?

Or is the answer more sinister?

Sofia Gatti – who was a child when her father died – is now an adult and she has created a GoFundMe page in a bid to raise the money required to hire an investigative team to “find out what really happened.”

So far it has only raised $29,000 of the $45,000 required.

Sofia Gatti’s aunt, Carolyn, has produced a fascinating video for Moms for Justice on YouTube recently which goes into detail about Arturo junior’s death.

Carolyn mentions Gatti senior’s death and then says: “Sixteen years later history repeats itself in the most horrific way imaginable.”

“And the same woman is at the centre of this nightmare and that nightmare, and it’s Arturo junior’s biological mother.”

Carolyn appears to be drawing from official documents, which I have not myself seen, but she says Arturo junior’s death is being treated as a “homicide” by the Mexican police, before making it clear Rodrigues was “innocent until proven guilty.”

She then goes into detail about a timeline of the events of 4-6 October 2025, which appears to be based on a Mexican law enforcement agency report.

According to Carolyn, on the Saturday night (4 October) Rodrigues refused to let her son go to his friend Benji’s birthday party, but he went anyway and then stayed the night at another friend, making her very angry.

Carolyn also said she had evidence Arturo junior wanted to move away from his mother’s and go and live in Canada.

She says she had spoken to someone – whose identity she has not revealed – who said that two hours before he died on the Monday (6 October), Arturo junior had spoken to them on the phone.

Her source told her Arturo junior was “happy” and was talking about starting a clothing line, getting a motorbike and moving to Canada.

Carolyn then says that Amanda left for the gym at 10.45am and her cleaner, Severiana, was in the apartment with Arturo junior.

Severiana reportedly saw Junior wrapping a black phone charger cord around his hand, before going upstairs to his room.

Carolyn says that at 12.30pm Severiana tried to clean his bedroom, but found the door was locked.

She says Amanda returned home at 2pm, just before Junior’s body was found in his locked room.

Carolyn says a post mortem report suggested Junior died of “manual strangulation” and even claims there were two people involved and the scene was then staged as a suicide.

She also makes much of the fact that Junior’s hyoid bone was fractured, just as it was with his father in 2009.

It is often assumed that a fractured hyoid bone means someone must have been strangled.

But it research suggests that in a quarter of suicidal hangings, the hyoid bone was fractured.

Carolyn says there were two hours between 11.30am and 1.30pm when Rodrigues was unaccounted for, and cannot be seen on CCTV in the gym.

She goes on to point out that the rear of the house was only accessible by canal.

“If Amanda is someone you want to look at for this, she would have to find a way to leave the gym during that window of time and come in through the back somehow, and that would mean she would have to conquer this waterway,” Carolyn says.

“Living there as long as she has, she must know people, she must know a way to be able to get in through the back, that would not surprise me,” Carolyn adds.

Personally it feels like she is reaching a bit there.

Carolyn also interviewed Erika Rivera on her YouTube channel earlier this year.

She asked about her and Gatti’s daughter, Sofia.

Erika told her: “It’s been hard. She doesn’t remember her dad…she’s felt the emptiness and she felt she always had to be a kind of perfect person…because he was a famous boxer.”

She said Sofia had hoped that when Arturo junior became an adult she would be able to build a relationship with him, her half-brother, and they would become friends.

He would have turned 18 in 2026.

Erika said Sofia had messaged Arturo junior on social media and he responded, sometimes “nastily”. But Erika said she believed that was actually Rodrigues responding, using her son’s Instagram account.

Clearly there is no love lost between Erika and Rodrigues.

Unlike in 2010, on this occasion I have been unable to get hold of Rodrigues, to get her side of the story or put any of these allegations to her.

I feel she deserves the right of reply and I have reached out to one of her previous lawyers, without success.

I would say that it is extremely odd that Arturo junior died in a very similar way to his father.

But at this stage there is certainly not enough to bring charges against Rodrigues or prove she was responsible, any more than she was first time around.

It could be that Gatti senior committed suicide, while in a dark place, and his son perhaps copied him, while suffering his own torment.

At this stage it is impossible to say.

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