HBO reboots popular Legendary Nights to chronicle Gatti-Ward

HBO reboots popular Legendary Nights to chronicle Gatti-Ward

Mark E. Ortega

Freelance

March 26, 2013

The much anticipated return of HBO Sports' brilliant Legendary Nights series was announced to heavy fanfare in a press release Tuesday afternoon.

The original series, which aired in 2003, chronicled a dozen different fights or series of fights that were aired on HBO and had a major impact on the sweet science. Now a decade later, HBO will bring back the highly lauded program to examine the trilogy of fights between Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward, which took place between May 2002 and June 2003 and earned two Fight of the Year honors in the process.

The original run of shows were half-hour long mini-documentaries that examined important fights like Larry Holmes' race war with Gerry Cooney, Marvin Hagler's controversial defeat against Sugar Ray Leonard, and Mike Tyson's stirring upset to Buster Douglas among others.

On a few different occasions over the past ten years, rumors floated out there that the series was going to return. Tuesday marks a first time that rumor became official, and it could not have come at a better time for the network.

News that broke this month of HBO electing not to buy fights from Golden Boy Promotions for the immediate future caused heavy criticism to fall on their shoulders. Bringing back Legendary Nights, a series that never received anything but praise during its run, was a smart move.

The difference between this new reboot and the old series is that the Gatti-Ward version will run an hour long rather than the half-hour length of the originals, which has boxing fans excited.

Considered one of the best trilogies in modern boxing history, Gatti and Ward engaged in three brutal battles in the early aughts that left a memorable stamp on the careers of both fighters. The first fight in particular is, according to many, one of the best pure action fights of all time. The ninth round of that fight had enough action and drama that it could get its own 30-minute documentary.

As was the case with the original run of fights, Legendary Nights will look at more than just the drama that took place inside the ring. Ward's life became the subject of a successful major motion picture “The Fighter” starring Mark Wahlberg in recent years, which ran up to right before the Gatti fight takes place. Gatti's life was very similar to many of his fights, as it had an up-and-down yo-yo trajectory that came to a tragic end in 2009 when he was found dead in Brazil while vacationing with his wife and kids.

Even though the two fighters waged brutality against each other over 30 rounds, the two were the best of friends outside the ring after the fight. Ward even training Gatti for his final fight as a professional, against Alfonso Gomez in 2007.

One would hope that this is only the beginning of an additional run of Legendary Nights episodes, as there are plenty more memorable fights that have taken place on HBO airwaves that didn't get a look in the first wave.

Mark Ortega is the boxing columnist for the Martinez News-Gazette and is a member of the Boxing Writers Assoc. of America and the RING Ratings Advisory Panel. He can be reached via e-mail at markeortega@gmail.com as well as followed on Twitter @MarkEOrtega.