Remembering Jake LaMotta, Combustable Champ and ‘Raging Bull’ Inspiration

Jake LaMotta, the former middleweight boxing champion who died Wednesday at age 95 from complications from pneumonia, handed Sugar Ray Robinson, the man that many sweaty scholars of the sweet science consider the best pound-for-pound fighter of all-time, his first-ever loss. His bouts with Robinson defined boxing in the 1940s and 1950s, an era when the sport soared in popularity. LaMotta’s combustable life, both inside and outside the ring, were brilliantly captured in Raging Bull, the 1980 Martin Scorsese film that won Robert De Niro, who portrayed LaMotta, an Oscar, and is recognized as one of the best and most influential movies ever made. America has seen more impressive athletes than Jake LaMotta. But arguably no boxer over the last 100 years, outside Muhammad Ali and maybe Mike Tyson in his prime, left a firmer imprint on American culture. LaMotta grew up in a rat-infested Bronx tenement. His father often beat him. He’d fight other kids for street-side entertainment. Those bouts earned him money to pay the family’s rent. He shipped off to reform school after trying to rob a jewelry store. Another future world middleweight champ, Rocky Graziano, was a classmate there. As a pro fighter, he was, in the words of Robinson, an “animal.” During LaMotta’s career, which stretched from 1941 through 1954, he compiled a 83-19-4 record, but was only knocked down once, in 1952, towards the end of his run. (LaMotta fell to the canvass in another fi...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Boxing Jake LaMotta martin scorsese Oscar Raging Bull Robert De Niro Sugar Ray Robinson Source Type: news