A

Jake LaMotta

1921-

American boxer

Jake LaMotta grew up a street kid whose skills with his fists earned him the amateur light heavyweight championship's Diamond Belt. At nineteen, he began a pro career that would include eighty-three wins (including thirty by knockouts), nineteen losses, and four draws. After retiring from boxing, he developed a comedy routine that drew on his fighting experiences and his failed relationships.

The "Bronx Bull"

Jake LaMotta was born Giacobe LaMotta on July 10, 1921 on the Lower East Side of New York, and was first encouraged to fight at a very young age by his father, who collected the coins thrown into the street by enthusiastic onlookers to help pay the family's bills. LaMotta spent time in reform school after a failed jewelry store robbery and had an estimated 1,000 street fights before beginning his pro boxing career at age nineteen, a career most remembered for his six fights with Sugar Ray Robinson.

LaMotta first fought Robinson in New York in 1942 in a fight that Robinson won on a decision. In 1943 they met twice in Detroit in fights that were held twenty-one days apart. In the initial fight, Robinson experienced his first career loss in forty-one professional fights, then took a decision in the second match. Robinson won in a

ten-round decision in 1945 in New York, but LaMotta was beating other top fighters from the welterweight to light heavyweight divisions. They included Fritzie Zivic, Tommy Bell, George Kochan, Bert Lytell, Jose Basora, Holman Williams, Bob Satterfield, and Tony Janiro. "He was not a special talent," wrote Steve Bunce in Scotland on Sunday, "just a 'tough, young punk,' as he was once referred to by the former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, whose restaurant on 51st and Broadway was the last resort for the fight fraternity in New York. His initial nickname, before the Bronx Bull stuck, was 'One-man Gang.' That is exactly how he fought."

Middleweight Champ

LaMotta refused to become a pawn of the mob and for years was prevented from getting the matches that could lead to a title. He finally won the middleweight championship from Frenchman Marcel Cerdan on June 16, 1949, with a technical knockout. Cerdan, who had beaten the legendary Tony Zale to win the title, was killed in an airplane crash while flying back to the United States for a rematch. LaMotta later admitted to the Kefauver Committee, a panel investigating corruption in boxing, that he had thrown a 1947 fight with Billy Fox to get that title shot. Earlier in 1947, LaMotta had been offered $100,000 to throw a different fight, an offer he refused. He accepted only that part of the deal for throwing the Fox fight that guaranteed him a chance to win the title and refused the money that went with it.

In beating Tiberio Mitri, LaMotta retained his title, and again successfully defended it in a fight against Laurent Dauthuille which ended with a knockout in the fifteenth round. The judges who scored the fight round by round had given it to Dauthuille, and if the fight were played by today's rules, which limit a fight to twelve rounds, LaMotta would have lost. And he did lose his next defense of his title to Robinson the following year. In the famous "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" of 1951, he lost the crown to Robinson. LaMotta, who himself had brutalized so many opponents, was being beaten so badly that the referee stopped the match in the thirteenth round.

A Fall from Grace

LaMotta had one more fight in 1951 and six in 1952. He had no matches in 1953 and fought his final three in 1954. By then he bore the scars of his career, including a nose that had been broken six times. LaMotta then quit the ring and settled in Miami, Florida where he opened a club and dated a string of movie stars, including Jayne Mansfield, Ginger Rogers, Jane Russell, and Hedi Lamar. He fell from grace with the sportswriters and most of his friends because of his violent behavior. He drank too much, pursued the wives of his friends and admitted to raping the wife of one. He was arrested and served time on a chain gang for acting as the pimp of an underage girl, although he has maintained that he was innocent.

Bunce, who wrote of meeting LaMotta, said that "there are so many tales of LaMotta groping a friend's wife or girlfriend at social events that it would be impossible to start listing them. It seems that retaliation was left to the women, presumably the men were too scared, and LaMotta was variously hit with full ice buckets or else doused with cocktails."

LaMotta's earlier loss to Bill Fox had been suspect since the event, and in 1960, he confessed to the Kefauver Committee that he had thrown that fight. His honesty degraded his reputation even further, and when Robinson quit boxing, LaMotta was barred from attending his farewell dinner.

Washington Times writer Thom Loverro, who caught LaMotta's comedy act at Café Milano in Georgetown, wrote that his one-liners "would have made Henny Youngman proud: 'I'm in great shape, every artery in my body is as hard as a rock…. We're going to talk aboutthe art of self-defense tonight. In order to defend yourself you need two things, a good lawyer and a good alibi….My doctor told me once if I didn't stop drinking I'd lose my hearing. I told the doctor so what, the stuff I'm drinking is better than the stuff I'm hearing.'" The line that LaMotta is famous for is his, "I fought Sugar Ray so many times, it's a wonder I don't have diabetes."

Always a storyteller, LaMotta performed his comedy routine for many years, and his minor celebrity received a boost when the movie Raging Bull was released. Married seven times, his marriage to his second wife, Vickie, is an integral component of the film based on his autobiography. LaMotta regularly abused Vickie, the mother of his sons, Jack and Joe, and one of his four daughters. Robert DeNiro won an Oscar for his portrayal of LaMotta in Raging Bull, a Martin Scorsese film that pulls no punches in depicting the life of one of the toughest boxers ever to step into the ring.

Roger Ebert reviewed Raging Bull in the Los Angeles Times, saying that the film "is the most painful and heartrending portrait of jealousy in the cinema—an Othello for our times. It's the best film I've seen about the low self-esteem, sexual inadequacy, and fear that lead some men to abuse women. Boxing is the arena, not the subject. LaMotta was famous for refusing to be knocked down in the ring. There are scenes where he stands passively, his hands at his side, allowing himself to be hammered. We sense why he didn't go down. He hurt too much to allow the pain to stop."

Personal Tragedy and the Later Years

Jack LaMotta, who had managed his father, died of cancer in February 1998. LaMotta's other son, Joe, had been convicted of trafficking in cocaine and served half of a five-year sentence. When he was paroled, he did his best to take his brother's place in helping his father. S.L. Price noted in Sports Illustrated that "it wasn't until the final months of his life that Joe began to shine. He traveled with Jake to autograph shows and cooked up the concept of LaMotta's Tomato Sauce. In July 1998, Joe and Jake went to Geneva to gauge prospects for the sauce in Europe, where Jake is popular. Joe was gaining confidence. 'He had always been in the shadow of his father,' says [Joseph] Fell, Jake's lawyer and Joe's best friend, 'but now he was psyched. If the sauce had done well, he would've moved to Geneva. He was already asking me to find somebody to manage his dad. I think he just wanted to start living his own life.'" On September 2, 1998, Joe died in the explosion of Swissair Flight 111, which had departed from Kennedy Airport and was bound for Geneva. LaMotta, who claims that he never earned more than a million dollars in his lifetime, filed a lawsuit against the airlines and Boeing for $125 million because of the death of his son. He was the first relative of a victim to file.

After the death of his sons, LaMotta retired to his Manhattan apartment and returned to managing his own life. "You know what people do now?" he said to Price. "They think I'm the godfather. They kiss my hand, women and men! Men come over and kiss me on the forehead. When my son died? More people were stopping me in the street. They hugged me, women, men."

Stephanie, daughter of LaMotta and his fourth wife, Dimitria, is a fighter like her father. An actress and boxing and fitness instructor, since 1979 she has also battled multiple sclerosis (MS), the disease of the central nervous system for which there is no known cure. In spite of bouts of paralysis and near blindness, Stephanie trained dozens of clients, including celebrities, at the Los Angeles Youth Athletic Center gym and created a video, Stephanie LaMotta's Boxersize Workout, before MS confined her to a wheelchair. She developed boxing workouts for women during the 1980s, but she was ahead of her time. Gym owners couldn't envision women hitting the bag, jumping rope, and shadow boxing, programs that are now enjoyed by women who have found that these routines are not only enjoyable but an excellent way to stay in shape.

Stephanie LaMotta was able to manage her symptoms until she was involved in an automobile accident that collapsed one of her lungs. In an interview with Earl Gustkey for the Los Angeles Times, she said, "I have a heavy bag in my garage and I punch it as part of my therapy." Speaking of her MS, Stephanie said, "I'm fighting this with all my heart. I'm like my dad in that way—we're both fighters. We talk about once a month and he inspires me."

LaMotta has been an inspiration to young boxers who have, like him, risen from poverty to grab championship with both hands. Sadly, LaMotta's admission that he threw a fight in order to achieve that chance has tarnished his image, but his refusal, except for that once, to cooperate with the mob bosses who controlled the game must be viewed as an act of extreme bravery. Boxing was a different game when LaMotta fought—dirty around the edges and taking a tremendous toll on young men who fought hundreds of fights without ever getting their big chance. That the Bronx Bull survived all this and can still laugh about it, is truly a story of courage and survival.

SELECTED WRITINGS BY LAMOTTA:

(With Joseph Carter and Peter Savage) Raging Bull: My Story, Prentice-Hall, 1970.

(With Chris Anderson and Sharon McGehee) Raging Bull II, Lyle Stuart, 1986.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Books

Hickok, Ralph. A Who's Who of Sports Champions: Their Stories and Records. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.

LaMotta, Jake, Joseph Carter, and Peter Savage. Raging Bull. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

LaMotta, Jake, Chris Anderson, and Sharon McGehee. Raging Bull II. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1986.

Markoe, Arnold, editor. The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Sports Figures, (two volumes). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2002.

Roberts, James, and Alexander G. Skutt. The Boxing Register. Ithaca, NY: McBooks Press, 1997, 1999.

Periodicals

Bunce, Steve. "Raging Bull was released twenty years ago this month." Scotland on Sunday (Edinburgh, Scotland) (November 25, 2002): 33.

Gustkey, Earl. "Body Blow." Los Angeles Times (July 14, 2001): D1.

Loverro, Thom. "Rageless Bull." Washington Times (February 12, 1997): 1.

Price, S. L. "After the Fall." Sports Illustrated, (September 6, 1999): R24.

Other

Ebert, Roger. Review of Raging Bull. Chicago Sun Times. http:www.suntimes.com/ (January, 1999).

Raging Bull. United Artists (1981).

Sketch by Sheila Velazquez