![]() Two years later, he got his title shot, defeating Marcel Cerdan, an Algerian-born French boxer who was known, among other things, for having an affair with the singer Edith Piaf. He deliberately lost a fight in 1947 – benefiting the gamblers who bet against him – and was suspended for several months because his lackluster effort was so blatantly obvious. Although he was a top-ranked contender, he was not granted a chance to fight for the championship until after he agreed to play along with the gangsters. But the only place I got hurt was out of the ring.”įor years, LaMotta refused to cooperate with the mobsters who controlled boxing when he was in his prime. My nose was broken six times, my hands six times, a few fractured ribs. “The truth of the matter?” LaMotta told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1996. The Ring magazine, the leading boxing periodical, said he had the “toughest chin” in the sport’s history. “To LaMotta, fighting was a personal statement,” author and historian Bert Sugar wrote in his 2006 book “Boxing’s Greatest Fighters.” “He fought with an anger that seemed as if it would spring forth from the top of his head like a volcanic eruption.”Įven when he lost, with his features bloodied and bruised, LaMotta retained a measure of pride by refusing to go down. He was a burly, compact 5-foot-8 and fought in a low crouch, attacking his opponent’s body in a swarming, relentless style, launching blunt-force punches that seemed to rise from the canvas. He stalked forward in the ring, with “blows bouncing off him like ball bearings off a battleship,” as Associated Press sportswriter Whitney Martin put it, absorbing punches and pain like few fighters before or since. He wore a hooded leopard-print robe into the ring and fought with a stubborn, inelegant fury that led him to be called the Bronx Bull. ![]() ![]() Brash and glib, ruggedly handsome and charismatic in a dark, dangerous way, he was one of the leading fighters of the 1940s and early ’50s, when boxing was among the nation’s most popular sports. A daughter, Christi LaMotta, announced his death in a Facebook post but did not provide additional details.Įven by the standards of boxing, LaMotta was a rough-hewn specimen, a product of the New York slums who learned his brutal trade on street corners and in reform school. He was 95, according to his family, although some records indicate he may have been a year older. ![]()
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