Making his debut at middleweight, Ray Robinson was dropped early on in the first round at Madison Square Gardens before going on to win a comfortable unanimous decision. A little over a year after his debut, Jake had put together an impressive record of 25-4-2 and was scheduled to fight Robinson for the first time. Turning professional in 1941, LaMotta quickly became a crowd favourite in the cigarette smoke-filled boxing halls littered throughout New York thanks to his high-pressure fighting style. In the ring, LaMotta was best known for his six savage fights with Sugar Ray Robinson, a man whom many consider to be the best to ever lace up a pair of gloves. LaMotta won just one of the encounters between the two, but he always brought the best out of Robinson, pushing the all-time great to his absolute limits on more than one occasion, often leaving a pristine, white canvas looking like the location of a brutal massacre.Īfter retirement, LaMotta would say: “I fought Sugar Ray Robinson so many times, it's a wonder I don't have diabetes.” Mikaela Mayer: Women's Boxing Is Back For Good LaMotta isn’t one of the greatest middleweights of all-time but he was certainly one of the division’s toughest.įive Boxing Stories You Might Have Missed This Week Thanks to the film, viewers know more about the exploits of LaMotta out of the ring, rather than in it. Raging Bull, while not entirely accurate, gave viewers a fascinating insight into the self-destructive tendencies and rage that followed LaMotta throughout his career. But despite being one of the most revered pictures in cinema history, Jake LaMotta, Raging Bull’s protagonist, remains an enigmatic character to most.

When director Martin Scorsese released the biographical drama Raging Bull in 1980, it became the magnum opus of boxing films.

Ray lamotta