Gatti case re-opened man , good news .I think his wife did it for real . As prosecutors in Brazil prepared to analyze new evidence in the suspicious death of boxer Arturo Gatti, his childhood friend and business partner in Montreal painted a disturbing picture of the welterweight champion's last few months as a battered husband, repeatedly subject to verbal abuse and sucker-punched by his wife. Testifying in Superior Court, where a battle over the dead man's $6-million estate is playing out, Antonio Rizzo replayed some of the incidents he says he witnessed between Gatti and his wife, Brazilian national Amanda Rodrigues, from the time the couple moved to Montreal from New Jersey in May 2007 to the boxer's fateful trip to Brazil in 2009. Gatti was found dead July 11, 2009, in a vacation home in Brazil, with a purse string found near his body. Authorities, after questioning and releasing Rodrigues, ruled it was a suicide. But the Gatti family doesn't believe that version of events and want Gatti's will - changed three weeks before his death to leave everything to Rodrigues - annulled. With Gatti's elderly mother and brother on one side of the courtroom and Rodrigues on the other, Rizzo told the court on Thursday the couple was always fighting. And as the months wore on, Gatti became more afraid of losing his infant son, and of what Rodrigues might do back in her native country. "She wants me to sign a Brazilian passport for him. But if she takes my son I'll never see him again," Rizzo testified, relaying what Gatti had told him. Rizzo, who met Gatti when he was about 8 - around the time he began boxing - repeatedly apologized to the court for the language he used when relaying Rodrigues's words. He described a particularly shocking scene he witnessed one night at the couple's penthouse on Jarry St. in St. Léonard, one of 82 condos the two men invested in and built together after Gatti retired from boxing in 2007. Rodrigues, naked and screaming, hit Gatti on the head with a broom before smashing crystal all around him and ordering him to clean it up, Rizzo said. " 'You're a loser, the only thing you're good at is bleeding, your mother's a *****, your sisters are prostitutes,' " Rizzo said, before Rodrigues's lawyer objected for the umpteenth time that Rizzo's testimony was hearsay and not admissible. The judge said she would take his objections under advisement. Rizzo testified that his friend, despite the last will and testament presented to the court by a notary on Tuesday, would never have agreed to leave everything to his wife. Three months before his death, Gatti complained to Rizzo that his wife was pushing him to change his will. "I told him: 'It's fine. You have two kids, your relationship is upside down. You leave half to your daughter and half to your son,' " Rizzo said. "(Gatti) said, 'You don't understand. Amanda wants me to leave everything to her. I will never do that.' " According to Rizzo, it was after several more conversations, including one where Gatti admits to his friend that he got a black eye from being "sucker-punched" by his wife, that Gatti asked him for help finding a divorce lawyer. Authorities in Brazil announced Thursday they would take a second look at their investigation into Gatti's death, and possibly order more investigation, after a report was made public on Wednesday concluding the boxer's death was a homicide: After a 10-month investigation a team of U.S. experts concluded Gatti was hit over the head and then strangled. In Montreal, Rodrigues's lawyer, Pierre-Hugues Fortin, said as far as he was concerned, there was no new probe into Gatti's death in Brazil, and the privately funded 300-page report, commissioned by Gatti's former manager, lacked credibility. "My client disagrees with the findings," he told reporters outside the courtroom. "There are a lot of unanswered questions." Fortin will begin his cross-examination of Rizzo on Friday morning. Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Gatti+abused+witness/5374690/story.html#ixzz1XRiYlT1H
