Would Ward vs Gatti happened in today's time?

You need to look no further then the YouTube Sensations invading boxing & landing on HUGE money PPV fights!

 

Hard sparring was looked at completely differently in the 90s vs today. The difference is inevitable

 

Most refs would have stopped it back in 2002 also.

If it wasn’t for Arturo Gatti’s reputation of withstanding obscene amounts of punishment in the ring, Frank might have stopped it too.

 

gatti had a reputation built up by Jim Lampley and the other HBO goons that he could survive any amount of punishment and still end the fight with one punch.
this reputation was built mainly off of two fights, against Wilson Rodriguez and against Gabe Rueleas, both from the mid 1990s.
the reality is Gatti took plenty of one sided beatings that he never had any hope in coming back in.
later in his career against Carlos Baldomir and lightly regarded Alfonzo Gomez, gatti was absorbing life altering punishment, and the fight should have been stopped much sooner, but you could hear those HBO hacks going on about 'dont sleep on Gatti guys, all he needs is one punch to turn this all around'
my point is Gattis reputation allowed him to continue on in fights and suffer health risk type beatings longer than your average fighter.
against Ward specifically, he was indeed rugged but never really a KO guy, and he had a bad habit of taking lots of punishment himself, so I think all that factored in to refs thinking in that famous 9th round.
I forget who the ref was, probably Frank Cappucino or somebody

 

Contro, this is an excellent post. Cheers, man

 

Definitely. 2002 wasn’t some ancient era where fights were always stopped late. It wasn’t like the 1950s, where Floyd Patterson got dropped 7 times in one round before they stopped it.

This not being stopped was rare in 2002 as well.

 

Chavez-Taylor was stopped for a lot less in 1990.

It wasn't a title fight or anything, I think you could find refs in the 60s who would have stopped it.

Referees were less likely to stop a fight in the past, but part is survivorship bias in that no one remembers the early stoppages 60 years later.