LaMotta dies at 95

Boxing legend and former middleweight champion Jake LaMotta — famous for his defiant endurance in the ring and for Robert De Niro’s Oscar-winning portrayal of him in the 1980 film “Raging Bull” — died late Tuesday at age 95.

“Rest in Peace, Champ,” De Niro said in a statement.

LaMotta died of complications from pneumonia in a nursing home near Miami, said his fiancé of 15 years, Denise Baker, who called him a fighter to the end.

“He was a champ, all the way,” Baker told The Post. “A warm, wonderful man.”

The Lower East Side native who grew up in the Bronx logged 83 wins — in- cluding 30 knockouts — in a career that spanned the 1940s into the early ’50s. Throughout, LaMotta was lauded for his iron jaw and ability to keep his footing despite the most brutal beatings.

His six-fight rivalry with Sugar Ray Robinson — long considered pound-forpound the greatest fighter that ever lived — was legendary. LaMotta won only one of those bouts, but it was Robinson’s first loss after 40 straight wins.

Until the end of his life LaMotta boasted that those other five fights were close ones, and that he never once hit the canvas.

“The three toughest fighters I fought were Sugar Ray Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson and Sugar Ray Robinson,” he once cracked.

But LaMotta didn’t just take punches.

“He was in some ways a much more sophisticated fighter than people give him credit for today,” author and boxing historian Thomas Hauser told The Post. “He had a good jab. He knew how to attack and he also knew how to turn his head at the last minute to lessen the impact.”

LaMotta’s life was also filled with controversy.

Married six times, he was brutal to his second wife, Vikki.

“He beat Vikki very badly,” said Hauser, co-author of her memoir, “Knockout.” “He was a good fighter, but he was a violent man.”

Still, thanks in large part to “Raging Bull,” Martin Scorsese’s directorial masterpiece, LaMotta will always be remembered for his fury and persistence.

“At first, he was afraid to hit me,” LaMotta once told The Post of training sessions with De Niro from the late ’70s, when the boxer was in his late 50s. “But when I got done with him, I’m sure he could have fought professionally. He was a natural.”

“What a courageous fighter he was,” recalled Bruce Silverglade of Gleason’s Gym, where LaMotta trained. “He fought to the finish,” Silverglade told The Post. “Until someone got knocked down.”