BoxRec

I guess the question I am asking is how well known was Lamotta among the general public before Ragin' Bull came out? I am 33 years old and I gotta admit that before I saw the movie, I knew almost nothing about Lamotta the man (but that was before I really started learning about the sport's history). I would have to think many other people were the same way.

Were Lamotta's intricacies and personal conflicts well known to people before the movie came out? Did the movie thrust the real-life Lamotta back into the spotlight?

I think as a fighter he was very well known. Many of his fights were televised on the Pabst Blue Ribbon series. As a man, he exposed much of his life in a book called Raging Bull ,I believe, that came out long before the movie.

lamotta was well known as a fighter and a world champion, as most world champions are known - "achievements"

jake also is known because of his 6 fights with the great ray robinson and known again later for his "admitting" to throwing a fight, billy fox.
sort of black-balled him a bit for exposing the truth about boxing, funny thing is "everybody" that knows boxing knows this political bs exists anyway, your just "not allowed" to admitt it.

time did fade on jake considerably as it does with most fighters and to answer your question the movie "revived" his career and status which may have fallen considerably with time as does most fighters...

but thank god it was revived and revisited, as was burley and charles and lloyd marshall and others, if people don't take up the cause for these greats they do and will become sadly "marginalized"...

even more sadly, britain suffers from an inferiority complex for some of "her sons" that should also be HOFers, harvey, mcavoy, roderick, and others to name but a few... but the fight has to be taken up for all great fighters especially the "forgotten and not-so-well known greats"...

god knows there's many more "academy award" performances to be told/made!!!

I have a boxing magazine from '73 that was a special edition, ranking the all-time top-ten middleweights. Jake came in at, like, number five or seven. I would say his popularity (skillwise, rankingwise) among boxing afficianados has in fact somehow inexplicably decreased since the release of "Raging Bull" ('80?). That movie was about a (colorful) world champion boxer, not some bum.

ps--I still think that the fluid moving, granite chinned Bernard Hopkins (boxer/puncher) beats LaMotta.

There are old-timers who believe that Jake LaMotta had
much, much more skill than he is given credit for.
In other words, LaMotta was not like Jeff Lacy in
terms of lacking skill

- Chuck Johnston

I would say the movie made him more popular with today's fans, but tarnished his legacy in terms of ring skills. The movie projects LaMotta as a guy who just ate everything his opponent threw at him, which in a sense is true, but not to at all to that extent.

What's even more sorry is that the fightsfilms available of are all from when he was past his prime and seems to justify this modern view of him.
But the fact is that LaMotta was at his best in the early 1940s and a bit past it by the time he won the title. He never took a hammering like the one he got from Robinson in their titlefight in 1951. In fact, their first five fights were all very close.
So I would say that material written about LaMotta prior to the movie is a lot more correct in terms of a judge of his skills and achievements than anything published later, unless it's by an old-timer who actually saw and remembers how good LaMotta was in his prime.

-KOKid-

For me, before seeing the movie, I have heard of Jake Lamotta and knew he was a great fighter, very tough, iron jawed figher. When I seen the movie, I think it showed just how tough Lacmotta was in and out of the ring.

One part that I really liked in the movie, was when Lamota was talking about fighting heavyweights and his brother calling him crazy, then Lamota got mad and asked his brother to hit him, then he forced his brother to hit him. I think that was one classic scene in the movie.

[quote="-KOKid-"]I would say the movie made him more popular with today's fans, but tarnished his legacy in terms of ring skills. The movie projects LaMotta as a guy who just ate everything his opponent threw at him, which in a sense is true, but not to at all to that extent.


Actually, I think that movie made him look BETTER in the ring than reality. It made him look like this devastating puncher, which he most certainly was not. In the movie when he hit guys they were reeling all over the ring. Doesn't quite gel.

ferocity wrote:For me, before seeing the movie, I have heard of Jake Lamotta and knew he was a great fighter, very tough, iron jawed figher. When I seen the movie, I think it showed just how tough Lacmotta was in and out of the ring.

One part that I really liked in the movie, was when Lamota was talking about fighting heavyweights and his brother calling him crazy, then Lamota got mad and asked his brother to hit him, then he forced his brother to hit him. I think that was one classic scene in the movie.

I want ya to do me a favor Joey....... I want ya to punch me in the face".

expug wrote:

ferocity wrote:For me, before seeing the movie, I have heard of Jake Lamotta and knew he was a great fighter, very tough, iron jawed figher. When I seen the movie, I think it showed just how tough Lacmotta was in and out of the ring.

One part that I really liked in the movie, was when Lamota was talking about fighting heavyweights and his brother calling him crazy, then Lamota got mad and asked his brother to hit him, then he forced his brother to hit him. I think that was one classic scene in the movie.

I want ya to do me a favor Joey....... I want ya to punch me in the face".

Tough family. I read his book a long time back. One thing that sticks in my mind was that when he told his old man some guys were ganging up on him at school, the old man, who worked lugging blocks of ice around before fridges were normal for ordinary folk, gave him an ice-pick to take to school.

One fact that didnt come out in the movie but was in the book was how Jake for many years had thought he killed a guy. It was in a robbery or an assault. Jake after years of carrying that thought around ran into the guy , at I believe one of his fights.