A hardened, successful fighter
The night in 1949 that Jake LaMotta beat Marcel Cerdan to win the world middleweight title, a man called Harry Gordon walked into the party in his hotel room.
‘‘The Bronx Bull’’ thought he had seen a ghost. As far as he knew, 10 years previously he had bludgeoned Gordon to death with a lead pipe and stolen his wallet, which was empty.
It transpired that reports of the bookmaker’s demise had been premature.
LaMotta cried that night, he later wrote: for Gordon, for raping an 18-year-old girl in the Bronx, and for the violence he had meted out to the women in his life.
Although LaMotta held his world title for only two years, he did so in one of boxing’s golden ages, unmatched in the quality of its middleweights.
Far from boxing each other only once, then leaving the public in endless suspense while negotiations went on over a rematch that might never take place, these men returned to the ring again and again, often within a ridiculously short space of time.
LaMotta boxed the great champion Sugar Ray Robinson six times, beating his rival once. Their last bout, in February 1951, was known as the ‘‘St Valentine’s Day Massacre’’; LaMotta was over the hill and took a beating, but he refused to hit the canvas; he was put down once in 106 fights.
LaMotta would not have claimed that his pugilistic gifts were to be compared to Robinson’s. Yet he was more than the crude slugger portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s film Raging Bull (1980).
True, his domestic life was brutal. He admitted to beating the first of his seven wives, Ida, so badly she almost died.
He served time in chain gangs and went to jail for pimping a 14-year-old girl at his nightclub. Yet in the ring he could not have survived in the company he kept there without some skills.
He was a hard, accurate puncher who understood that the best road to victory was to keep his gloves in the other man’s face.
He took punishment, but knew how to rock back from punches and reduce their impact. Although a flattened nose was testimony to the savagery of his ring encounters, he survived without the physical and neurological damage so often germane to his trade.
He was born Giacobbe LaMotta and grew up in the Bronx. His childhood was shaped by the life of the streets: his father forced him to fight other kids, and the loose change thrown by onlookers helped the family’s finances.
He took early to crime, mainly petty thieving, jemmying slot machines and street robbery – generally of women. He spent several periods in reformatories and it was during one such sentence that he was introduced to boxing.
On getting out, he turned professional and had his first paid bout in New York in 1941.
A few months later he married Ida, whom he described as ‘‘a barely-19 Bronx girl.’’ He divorced her in 1945 to marry Vikki Thailer, whom he met at a swimming pool and with whom he remained until 1957; like Ida, she suffered physically at his hands.
After turning pro, he was busy, with 20 contests in his first year alone.
In an era before media hype could trumpet a reputation without any great proof of merit being offered in the ring (and before a myriad of world titles), LaMotta had to wait a long time to be given a crack at the world crown.
When he was, it was only because he had been promised it by the New York mob on condition that he threw a bout against the unfancied Billy Fox in 1947.
It was not the first time LaMotta had been approached, as he reported to the Kefauver committee. In 1947 he had been offered $100,000 to take a dive.
‘‘I was too stupid to be scared,’’ he admitted after beating Tony Janiro. When ‘‘they’’ came back with a second offer of $100,000, LaMotta said he was not interested in the money, but would throw the fight against Fox for a chance at the world title.
Nobody was convinced when he went down in the fourth. In the event it was not until 18 months and eight bouts later that he had his chance, against the tough and talented Marcel Cerdan in June 1949.
It was LaMotta’s 89th professional fight, and one of unremitting ferocity. Cerdan suffered an early shoulder injury when he was wrestled to the floor and fought on for nine rounds in discomfort, but retired in the 10th.
There were more title bouts, including the St Valentine’s Day Massacre, but LaMotta had made a decent amount by the standards of the time (about $1 million, worth about $9 million today) and had the sense to retire in 1954, with a record of 106 fights: 83 victories (30 by knockout), 19 defeats and four draws.
His life thereafter was not one of unblemished tranquillity. He had periods in thrall to drink, put on vast amounts of weight and stacked up the marriages, in most of which he bullied and beat his wives.
He spent further time in prison, for pimping. The reputation with which he had left the ring seemed quite buried and a sports magazine said of him: ‘‘LaMotta’s life has been so unappetising, so foully unpalatable, that it bends the conventional limits of understanding.’’
Redemption of a sort was at hand. In 1980 Scorsese decided to make a film of LaMotta’s life, and in presenting it in its unadorned brutishness somehow made a hero of its villain.
Robert De Niro, who impersonated the boxer with such fidelity that he trained with him, won an Oscar.
LaMotta, drafted in as a consultant, found himself a celebrity. Journalists fought to interview him.
He enjoyed the attention and delivery of a stream of one-liners to all and sundry – he did stand-up comedy, as well as taking a few acting roles – and the mellowness that had eluded him for so long seemed at last to cloak him. Yet his latter years were clouded by tragedy.
In 1998 he was shaken by the deaths of his two sons, whom he had with Vikki. Jack, also known as Jake Jr, died of cancer, and Joe, who had earlier been imprisoned for cocaine trafficking, was killed in the Swissair disaster off Nova Scotia.
Vikki would later pose nude at the age of 51. ‘‘She always complained she never had anything to wear,’’ LaMotta remarked. ‘‘I never believed her until I saw her pictures in Playboy.’’ Vikki died in 2005.
Seven times married, he also had four daughters: Jacklyn, with Ida; with Vikki he also had Christi, who was estranged from her father for 30 years until 2015. With his third wife, Sally, he had Elisa and Mia. He divorced Sally and married Dimitria, with whom he had Stephanie in 1961; Stephanie went on to became an actress and boxing and fitness coach, working even after she was forced by multiple sclerosis to use a wheelchair.
In the late 1970s, he married Debra, then in 1985 came Theresa Miller. LaMotta’s seventh wife was his long-term girlfriend Denise Baker, nearly 30 years his junior, who had two children.
LaMotta never made excuses for his violent nature.
‘‘You can’t go into the ring and be a nice guy,’’ he said. ‘‘I would go a month, two months, without having sex. It worked for me because it made me a vicious animal. You can’t fight if you have any compassion or anything like that.’’
The Times, London