Jake LaMotta, ‘Raging Bull’ of boxing, dies at 95

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Jake LaMotta, ‘Raging Bull’ of boxing, dies at 95
Jake LaMotta, an iron-jawed boxer who brawled his way to the world middleweight championship in 1949 and whose tempestuous life was compellingly portrayed in an Oscar-winning performance by Robert De Niro in the film “Raging Bull,” died Sept. 19. He was 95.

A daughter, Christi LaMotta, announced his death in a Facebook post but did not provide additional details.

Even by the standards of boxing, Mr. 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. 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.

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. 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.
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