“How he can survive them,” said the fight announcer, “nobody knows.” The fight ended in the 13th round, on a TKO, with LaMotta resting on the ropes. He defeated Michael Cerdan, of France, for the crown, and held it until February 14, 1951, when Robinson pummeled LaMotta in Chicago.

The subsequent $20,000 payment to the mob got LaMotta a shot at the middleweight title in 1949. “By, if there was anybody in the Garden who didn’t know what was happening, he must have been dead drunk,” LaMotta later wrote about his fight with Fox. Organized crime had infiltrated boxing during this time, and LaMotta famously took a dive against Billy Fox in 1947 in New York City. The effort would wear LaMotta’s opponent out. Often, taking punches was part of his game plan. “His heart was that of a thoroughbred trapped inside the body of a mule,” the late boxing historian Bert Sugar wrote of LaMotta. Their styles clashed: Robinson danced in the ring, while LaMotta plodded and punched. LaMotta claimed the judges gifted Robinson a victory for his military service. Robinson, who enlisted in the Army the next day, won a close decision. On February 26th, they fought again in Detroit, and LaMotta knocked Robinson down in the seventh.

He knocked Robinson through the ropes in the eighth round and won the decision. LaMotta’s only win against Robinson came during that period, on February 5, 1943, in Robinson’s hometown of Detroit. He fought Robinson six times, including twice in a three-week span in 1943, a remarkable reminder that boxers used to participate in a functional sport with regular major events, while also putting their brains at risk of regular beatings. (LaMotta fell to the canvass in another fight, but he threw it).

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.

Jake lamotta biography