‘It’s not your night’. Why did Jake LaMotta have to lose to Billy Fox in ’47?

Article first appeared on Gambling.com

June 14th 1960. A warm summer’s day in Washington DC. The air is sweet with the city grind and the hustle of a country racing toward adolescence and the associated rebellion. Chatter spills from sidewalks, shoes are shined, a soft percussion to the chaotic jazz horn of taxicabs and the clatter of the capital’s iconic street cars. Morning sunshine glints from a mile of Buick chrome.

This commercial idyll, stretching out beneath the blue sky of the star spangled dream belies the political tension that pulses under the skin of black and white America. It is a time of ideology too, the battle for civil rights, of JFK, Cuba, missiles and crusaders for truth and equality.

Former Middleweight champion Jake LaMotta is in the capital. A face from the smoke and shadows of the monochrome America of the 1950s. One uncomfortable with technicolour progress and the dawn of an age more recognisable to us today.

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December 27, 2019 0

The night the Raging Bull, Jake LaMotta, fell

Deep as first love, and wild with regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more
Alfred Tennyson, poet 1809-1892, The Princess (1847)

No hush fell beneath the domed ceiling of the Miami Coliseum on New Year’s Eve 1952. Drawn to party, the event, the crowd seemed neither stunned nor charged by the sight of former Middleweight champion and boxing superstar Jake LaMotta slumped to the canvas for the first time in his then 103-fight career. Referee Bill Regan, a Welterweight now broadened by twenty years of retirement, took up the count. LaMotta, 31 and fighting at a career high of 173 pounds, pawed for the bottom rope with his right hand as Regan loomed in.

Opponent Danny Nardico rushed to a corner, the adrenaline racing through his body. The enormity of what he’d just done with a thunderous cross-cum-hook, the last of a flurry of clubbing shots, writ large before him.

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December 31, 2018 1

Link: Jake LaMotta speaks to the Scotsman

‘Raging Bull’ LaMotta hits out at demise of boxing

I never tire of hearing the opinions of boxing’s grandmasters and the ‘Raging Bull’ is one of the last remaining voices from the era in which he excelled. Tim Gaynor of the Scotsman has taken the time to ask Jake his opinions on the current state of boxing, his view on the rise of UFC and his own motivations and methods as a fighter. Of course, for fervant boxing fans some of the content is familiar ground and the famous ‘diabetes’ line he enjoys reciting to summarise the frequency with which he met nemesis Sugar Ray Robinson has another airing, but his opinion remains relevant and interesting. Click on the image above to read Tim’s interview.

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October 29, 2009 0

Buncey’s Boxing Hour Fantasy Fights, really?

Firstly, it is important to point out the irrepressible Steve Bunce was fully aware his selection of the best fantasy fights sent in by viewers wouldn’t be unanimously approved and in the subjective nature of these types of theoretical debates, disagreement is inevitable but come on Steve, Ricky Hatton the bull strong 10 stoner versus Prince Naseem the short featherweight? Surely, there is a better, more realistic fight than that for either man.