Because it could be not so funny, after the first minutes (just an impression)...
Anyway one may try NIQ3 mod (No Items Quake 3, read
DO NOT LINK[/b]) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/ModCompat/NIQ3]here) and disable all weapons except for gauntlet (the mod's GUI allows to select which weapons use) it should work, I suppose. UPDATE: I checked, and one has to enable at least
two weapons, or the game will freeze.
Or I believe I read something about some command to remove items direcly from OpenArena (again to remove all weapons except gauntlet), but I didn't test it yet.