Boxing legend a ‘Raging Bull’ in and out of the ring
Jake LaMotta, boxing’s “Raging Bull,” who brawled his way to the middleweight boxing championship in a life of unbridled fury — within the ring and outside it — that became the subject of an acclaimed film, died Tuesday in Aventura, Fla., near Miami. He was 95.
His longtime fiancée, Denise Baker, said he died of pneumonia at Palm Garden of Aventura, a nursing home and rehabilitation facility, where he had been under hospice care.
A “good-for-nothing bum kid” with a terrible temper, as he later described himself, LaMotta learned to box in an upstate New York reformatory, where he had been sent for attempted burglary. Having gone undefeated as an amateur after his release, he turned pro in 1941 and unleashed his enmity on dozens of ring opponents.
He ultimately became a pop culture symbol of rage when the director Martin Scorsese told his story in his 1980 film Raging Bull, based on LaMotta’s 1970 memoir of the same title, written with Joseph Carter and Peter Savage. Robert De Niro won an Academy Award for his portrayal of LaMotta, and the film was nominated in six categories, including best picture.
LaMotta was able to absorb a flurry of punches only to unload a more brutal barrage on an opponent. He would, as he wrote in his memoir, “charge out of the corner, punch, punch, punch, never give up, take all the punishment the other guy could hand out but stay in there, slug and slug and slug.”
Ray Arcel, one of boxing’s most renowned trainers, said of LaMotta, “When he was in the ring, it was like he was in a cage fighting for his life.”
Best remembered for his six bouts with Sugar Ray Robinson, LaMotta won 83 fights (30 by knockouts), lost 19 (including a “fix” to which he belatedly confessed), telling a congressional panel that he had been promised that if he lost that fight he