Career defined by duels with Robinson
JAKE LaMotta, a brawling middleweight champion whose epic battles with Sugar Ray Robinson defined nonheavyweight boxing in the 1940s and early ’50s, died this week aged 95.
The former champion died on Wednesday at a Miamiarea hospital from complications of pneumonia, according to his longtime fiancee, Denise Baker.
LaMotta, known to many only as the conflicted heroantihero in
Raging Bull, the movie based on his autobiography, was a busy fighter who posted an 83194 record in his 14year, 106bout career.
He fought Robinson six times — twice in three weeks in 1943 — winning only once. In their final fight, a slugfest known as boxing’s version of the St Valentine’s Day massacre, he lost his hardearned (and some would say illgotten) title.
Robinson won when the referee stopped the fight in the 13th round of that February 1951 bout at the old Chicago Stadium, while a pounded and helpless LaMotta hung on the ropes.
But LaMotta, proud of his ability to take a punch, never hit the canvas and, as Robinson was declared the winner, said, ‘‘Ya didn’t put me down, Ray; ya didn’t put me down!’’
LaMotta had Robinson pinned in a corner and nearly finished the match in the 11th round, but Robinson escaped and turned the tables.
‘‘I ran out of gas,’’ LaMotta said later. ‘‘It was my last barrage. I couldn’t raise my arms.’’
Although battlers in the ring, he and Robinson were friends outside it, and Robinson was best man at LaMotta’s sixth wedding. LaMotta responded whenever asked, ‘‘The three toughest opponents I’ve ever been up against were Sugar Ray Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson and Sugar Ray Robinson. I fought Sugar so many times, I’m surprised I’m not diabetic.’’
They fought first in 1942, when Robinson won a 10round decision in New York. Then, on February 5, 1943, LaMotta handed Robinson his first loss after 40 pro victories, knocking him out of the ring before winning a 10round decision in a Detroit fight that had promoters scrambling for a rematch. The rematch occurred exactly three weeks later and was won by Robinson, again in 10 rounds.
With Robinson heading for World War 2 service, LaMotta turned to other opponents — he fought Fritzie Zivic four times in less than a year — but they got together again twice in 1945, when Robinson won 10 and 12round decisions.
Robinson then set his sights on the welterweight title and won it, but LaMotta, despite impressive performances against some of the best fighters in the business, from welterweights to lightheavyweights, could not get a middleweight title shot.
‘‘I wanted to make it on my own, but it took me a long time, and I had to throw a fight,’’ LaMotta said in 2006. ‘‘I tried to do everything on the up and up, but time was running out and I was getting older.’’
So, in an effort to curry favour with the underworld figures who controlled boxing at the time, LaMotta agreed to take a dive against Billy Fox.
The fight, staged in New York’s Madison Square Garden in November 1947, was a fiasco. Fox won on a fourthround knockout, but the fighters were so inept that everyone quickly realised the fix was in. Purses were withheld, and LaMotta was suspended.
In his book Raging Bull — his ring nickname was ‘‘The Bronx Bull’’ — LaMotta later wrote: ‘‘The first round, a couple of belts to his head, and I see a glassy look coming over his eyes . . . A couple of jabs and he’s going to fall down? I began to panic a little. I was supposed to be throwing a fight to this guy and it looked like I was going to end up holding him on his feet.
‘‘By [the fourth round], if there was anybody in the Garden who didn’t know what was happening, he must have been dead drunk.’’
Despite his willingness to go with the flow, LaMotta did not get his title shot until nearly two years later and then had to come up with $20,000 for then champion Marcel Cerdan.
Cerdan dislocated his shoulder early in the fight in June 1949, and LaMotta won when he quit after the ninth round. LaMotta agreed to a rematch, but the French Algerian was killed in a plane crash and LaMotta successfully defended his crown only twice before again running afoul of Robinson, who had given up his welterweight title for a shot at the middleweight belt.
LaMotta fought through 1952 — he finally was knocked off his feet by Danny Nardico on December 31 that year — and was inactive in ’53 before retiring after three fights in 1954.
Giacobbe LaMotta was born on July 10, 1922, in the Bronx, and grew up fighting. As a youngster in his Italian neighbourhood, he was urged by his father to fight other kids while adults threw pocket change into the ring. His father collected the money, using it to pay household expenses.
‘‘I used to fight on the streets a lot,’’ LaMotta said in 2006. ‘‘We were always fighting, either for real or for fun or for money . . . That’s how I learned to fight.’’
Boxing instruction during a teenage stint in reform school for burglary — boyhood friend and fellow fighter Rocky Graziano was there at the same time — smoothed his style and LaMotta was fighting professionally when he was 19.
In retirement, he ran a nightclub in Miami Beach, where he was the inhouse standup comic and singer.
He also testified before a Senate inquiry into boxing on the fixed Fox fight, served a short prison term on a morals charge and appeared in several movies (he was a bartender in The
Hustler with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason).
In addition, he introduced a food products line, starring LaMotta’s Tomatta Sauce, and, with Joseph Carter and Peter Savage, wrote Raging Bull, later coaching and advising Robert De Niro, who played him in the movie. Said LaMotta of the film, ‘‘I told the producer I wanted to play myself, but he said, ‘Jake, you’re not the type’.’’
De Niro won an Academy Award playing the troubled boxer in a Martin Scorsese film that several critics have ranked as among the top 100 movies made.
‘‘Rest in Peace, Champ,’’ De Niro said in a statement.
The movie unflinchingly portrayed LaMotta as a violent and abusive husband — he was married six times.
‘‘I’m no angel,’’ he said in 2005. In 1998, LaMotta, who had four daughters, lost both his sons. Jake LaMotta jun (51) died from cancer in February. Joe LaMotta (49) was killed in plane crash in September. — Los Angeles Times