Jake LaMotta

Jake LaMotta, born Giacobbe LaMotta on July 10, 1922, in the Lower East Side of New York City, emerged from a violent childhood to become one of boxing’s most feared middle‑weight champions. The son of Italian immigrants, he was forced by his father to fight other boys for pocket change, an early lesson that forged his relentless, inside‑fighting style that later earned him the nicknames “The Bronx Bull” and “Raging Bull.” After serving a stint in a reformatory, he turned professional at 19 and quickly amassed a 14‑0‑1 record, culminating in a world middleweight title win over Marcel Cerdan in 1949. His six‑fight rivalry with Sugar Ray Robinson, highlighted by Robinson’s sole career defeat at LaMotta’s hands in 1943, cemented his reputation as a swarmer with an iron chin, capable of absorbing punishment that would have felled lesser fighters. Despite a controversial loss to Billy Fox—later admitted as a fixed bout to appease the Mafia—LaMotta defended his title against formidable opponents, most famously in the 1950 “Fight of the Year” against Laurent Dauthuille and the brutal 1951 Saint Valentine’s Day showdown that ended his reign. After retiring from the ring, LaMotta leveraged his notoriety into a diverse entertainment career, appearing in over fifteen films including The Hustler and the iconic Martin Scorsese drama Raging Bull, for which Robert De Niro won an Academy Award portraying him. He ran a popular bar in Miami Beach, performed as a stage comedian, authored several autobiographies, and remained a colorful, if turbulent, public figure, surviving multiple marriages, seven children, and the tragic loss of both sons before his death from pneumonia complications on September 19, 2017, at age 95.