Jake LaMotta

65 years ago on New Year’s Eve of all nights for a prize fight, light-heavyweight contender Danny Nardico accomplished something that no other man had done at the time, and no other man ever would: the 25 year old knocked down and stopped the seemingly unstoppable Jake LaMotta. Nardico, who was sporting a hard-earned 42-8-4 pro ledger, faced a fading but still tough LaMotta, 81-17-14, in what would be one of the former middleweight king’s final fights.

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As fight fans the word over know, boxing great Jake LaMotta passed away this week at the long-lived age of 95. Tributes have been pouring in from all over, deservedly so, and most celebratory pieces written in dedication to “The Bronx Bull” go into great detail about Jake’s great chin, his unimaginably tough and durable chin.

Truly a phenomenon, LaMotta, who retired from the ring with an astonishing 83-19-4(30) record in April of 1954, outlived his famous ring rivals by a considerable amount of time. The sublime Sugar Ray Robinson has been gone for well over thirty years, Frenchman Laurent Dauthuille, against whom Jake scored that flabbergasting, come-from-behind, last 13-seconds of the 15th-round KO, passed away back in 1971. Tony Janiro, the good looking kid Jake busted up (as immortalized in the classic movie starring Robert De Niro (“well, he ain’t good looking no more”) left us in 1985. And the list goes on.

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The International Boxing Hall of Fame announced its flags will fly at half-staff in memory of middleweight champion “The Raging Bull” Jake LaMotta. He passed away yesterday (9/19) surrounded by family and friends at Palm Garden Nursing Home in Aventura, FL following a battle with pneumonia. He was 95.

“Jake LaMotta was one of the toughest and most relentless boxers in ring history,” said Hall of Fame Executive Director Edward Brophy. “The Hall of Fame joins the boxing world in mourning the passing of a legend.”

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