Your comparisons are the worst I’ve ever seen. That’s saying something. Jake didn’t get attacked by the mob. He took a dive for his buddies and was rewarded by them. Hell, you just admitted he sold his venues to them for a cut-rate price. “Forced him” lol. As in he had no choice — he couldn’t sell to any other buyer, he couldn’t continue to operate regardless (not that it would be necessarily a good business decision, but you’re saying they FORCED him to do so, which is a lot different than choosing to do so), he couldn’t just promote non-boxing events and operate them as venues? So now we have him (a) taking a dive for the mob, (b) getting a title shot from them and (c) doing business with them by selling something at a super-low price. And to you none of that adds up to him being in bed with the mob? How many fighters in history have had so many dealings with the mob yet get a pass on their affiliations? None. But you’re not going to change your mind no matter how many facts tell you you’re wrong.
The question of Jake LaMotta fighting bigger or smaller men interested me, so I looked at the weights at fightsrec.com where they are very easily available. Jake twice gave up more than 10 lbs. Joe Frederick (3-5-1)--169-182 very early in Jake's career Johnny Pretzie (9-13-1)--170-188 at the end when Jake was attempting a comeback after the Nardico defeat. Both Frederick and Pretzie were mediocre fighters with losing records, but had 13 & 18 lbs on Jake. Jake had 11 listed fights in which he had a 10 or more lb. pull in weight. Jimmy Edgar*--160-149 W Ray Robinson--158-145 L Jackie Wilson--161-145 W Ray Robinson--161-145 W Ray Robinson--161-145 L Fritzie Zivic--161-150 W (SD) Tommy Bell--161-148 W Tommy Bell--161-151 W Tommy Bell--161-151 W Cecil Hudson--165-155 L Vern Lester--165-154 W (SD) *There is a second Edgar fight in which Jake's weight is given as over 160 but no weight is given for Edgar. There are also a quite a few fights in which Jake has 5 to 10 lbs., such as Bert Lytell. I think Saintpat has the better of this argument. LaMotta generally had weight pulls. Many so-called big men--Jimmy Reeves, Nate Bolden, Lloyd Marshall and Bob Satterfield, were really not that heavy compared to Jake. Against bigger light-heavies, Fox, Murphy, and Nardico, Jake was likely to lose badly. What about Graziano? He fought a bunch of welters but was only a super-welterweight himself for much of his career, so his weight pulls weren't generally as great. I found two of Graziano's fights in which he had a ten lb. weight pull. Red Cochrane--153-143 (KO 10) Charley Fusari--160-148 (KO 10)
I wouldnt know what his argument is vis a vis the weights since hes been added to my ignore list. Something very few morons have managed. However, less than 10% of Jakes fights were against men significantly smaller than himself. Your own numbers bear this out. Of that small numer, half of those fights came against all time great fighters in the WW division and almost all of them came against guys rated right near the top. So its not like he was picking soft ones. Furthermore, Bell, Robinson, and Zivic they routinely fought bigger fighters. Finally, you can defend Graziano all you want but the point in relation to him is the idea that the ONLY rated fighters he fought were welterweights and somehow he gets a MW title shot. He was a middleweight. Period. He couldnt make the WW limit. There was no LMW at that time so dont go creating some fake division to excuse the fact that Graziano was protected. And had Graziano had some of the stellar wins at MW that LaMotta had it wouldnt be a big deal that he picked up some WW scalps along the way. Everyone did it. That was the name of the game back then, fighting at catchweights. The problem was that Graziano had exactly zero top rated MW scalps to deserve his title shot. Another point that should be made about these catchweights matches in relation to LaMotta is that LaMotta turned pro at LHW and melted down to MW. He didnt have any more room to get down further for smaller guys like Robinson and Zivic. The one time he really tried it was against Janiro and he damn near killed himself doing it. Against Marshall and Satterfield those weights for those guys are deceptive. They wanted a good purse so they came down in weight in to fight LaMotta. They were legitimate light heavyweights when they fought him and likely rehydrated to higher weight than the official weigh in. So while yes, they didnt weigh that much more, they were the bigger guys and by a fairly significant margin.
To expand on Compton's point about catchweights, the analysis of LaMotta's opponents also should consider the fact that many of his fights were during wartime when promoters were scrambling around to make matches with a relatively small pool of available fighters until the discharged fighters had time to work their ways back into contention. As a result, there were a motley of matches made that would not have occurred during normal times. Promoters were in a survival mode, not a mode where they were building up contenders for championship matches since most of the champions were unavailable to defend their titles. For whatever reasons, fighters like Zivic, Robinson, and LaMotta were were the big-time attractions who could demand the best purses and cherry pick their matches. As for the LaMotta-Robinson series, Robinson was so far and away better than the available competition that LaMotta was the only fighter who could give him a competitive match so the promoters kept matching them. By the time the middleweight division was beginning to recover from the war years in late 1947 or so, the weight disparity of LaMotta's opponents lessened and the quality of his competition improved, especially as the European fighters like Cerdan, Dauthuille, Villemaine, and Mitri began to assert themselves.
Exactly. Both Robinson and LaMotta themselves mentioned in several interviews that it was difficult for them to get fights so they kept fighting each other.
Great comment,, this puts the subjective into it's proper perspective . I do seem to recall that Bob supposedly hurt Jake worse than anyone else did.
Graziano--I think he is a below average champion. I will do a separate post on him. This thread is about LaMotta. "Less than 10% of Jake's fights"--actually 11 listed fights out of 106. That comes to about 10.4%. How does this compare to other top middles of the time and soon after. Tony Zale--had no listed 10 lb. weight pulls in 87 fights, 75 of which we have weights. (the fights for which we don't have weights are early and/or obscure) His largest weight pull was 8 lbs. in 1938 (162-154) against Bobby LaMonte (5-16-4). What ever is said of Zale, he didn't feast on smaller men. His largest weight deficit was 12 lbs. (176-164) to Billy Conn in 1942. Steve Belloise--out of 111 fights, he had one in which he had a 10 lb. weight pull, against Tommy Bell (160-149). George Abrams--out of 61 fights, he had three. Phil Furr (157-147), Vic Dellacurti (159-149), and Ray Robinson (162-151) Bobo Olson--out of 115 fights, he had three. (Candy MacFarland 159-149, Pedro Jimenez 160-143, Woody Harper 162-152) Gene Fullmer--had none listed in 64 fights. (to repeat this is listed fights, as some early fights do not have listed weights, but the vast majority of important fights do) So these five middles together had 358 fights, and only 7 are listed with 10 or more lbs. weight advantage. LaMotta has 11. I think that is obviously significant when evaluating his claims to all time rating. There is probably validity in pointing to WW2 impacting LaMotta's record and his fights with welters. Not only were 15 million men out of a total population of around 130 million in the military, but there were travel restrictions and blackouts and other war time impediments. But two points. The impact of the war doesn't change the fact that LaMotta's early record is built up again war time competition which observers of the time thought was inferior. And it is not like there weren't middles around to fight--Charley Burley, Jack Chase, Eddie Booker, Archie Moore, Ezzard Charles, Kid Tunero, etc. I think it a valid question why LaMotta was matched so often with welters, plus 4 of these 11 fights came after the war ended. to be continued
"Marshall" "the weights . . . are deceptive." Why. Lloyd Marshall was not significantly larger than LaMotta. He was 5' 10" and could make the middleweight limit. On November 8, 1943 Marshall fought Jack Chase for the middleweight championship of California. Marshall weighed 160. There was a rematch on December 13, 1943. Marshall weighed 159. Marshall fought LaMotta on April 21, 1944. He contracted to make 161 and came in at 160 1/4. He didn't beat LaMotta because he was bigger. He beat LaMotta because he was better. And rather than being deceptive, I think weight is the ultimate factual proof of how big a man really is. Interestingly on July 27, 1944, Marshall fought Joey Maxim. Marshall weighed 166 while Maxim came in at 187. So against a heavyweight Marshall came in at 166. Seems pretty much his upper limit. As for some of the other "big guys"-- three fights with Jimmy Reeves and the weights: Jake 167 Reeves 166, Jake 164 Reeves 166, Jake 160, Reeves 160. one fight with Nate Bolden--Jake 164 Bolden 163 So these just seem more or less equal size fights. As for not being able to get down lower in weight for Robinson and Wilson and the like. That is not the issue. The issue is having so many fights with smaller men. Why Jackie Wilson rather than Burley or Chase or Booker? It seems valid to ask if LaMotta went out of his way to match himself with smaller men.
On Rocky Graziano. I agree with you about him. He built his reputation on smaller men to get a shot at the title, although he then won it. He had two things going for him. He had the mob behind him. And he was an exciting fighter. His very weaknesses worked in his favor with come from behind KO wins against men he should have handled with less trouble. That actually aided him as a box office draw, which he was. Graziano was a much bigger draw than LaMotta. It helps to have that punch. As for constantly bringing Graziano up in LaMotta threads, it seems a deflection. It is sort of like if I say I think Grover Cleveland is a somewhat overrated president, the response is what about Franklin Pierce. Yes, Pierce was lousy, but he has nothing to do with where Cleveland should rate as a president. I feel the same way about Graziano and LaMotta. Graziano is not relevant to whether LaMotta has become overrated. There does seem to be an over-the-top animus against Graziano though. Like the whole issue is LaMotta versus Graziano. Does this reflect LaMotta's attitude about Graziano? I read Raging Bull back in the 1970's, but don't remember that much except the writer implied Jake had a guilt trip and so took punishment in the ring sort of as penance. I have seem the movie biographies of the men, and they present an interesting contrast. Raging Bull pulls no punches about what an SOB Jake was, but as the title implies, also strongly pumps him as the toughest of the tough fighter. Rocky's biography on the other hand presents him as a young bad egg who is getting worse and seems on the road to a dead end until it abruptly turns around when he meets the right girl. Corny as this might be to some, there seems to be truth to it. Rocky might never have been a saint, but he ended up a lot better than anyone could have expected. There is little attempt in the film to build him up as a fighter, unlike Raging Bull. He is presented as a slob from the streets who got lucky and knew it. The title tells it, "Somebody Up There Likes Me" which in the 1950's was assumed to be the Big Guy above the clouds, but more likely was the mob. Still it is a much more appealing take than Jake's.
Yet nobody could find a light heavyweight for LaMotta to fight when they were scrambling to make matches lol. Just little guys. And look how often he came in over middleweight and got to be considered a middle. I got the plus-1 of coming in at 161 but he was routinely above that (and often into the mid-160s even when fighting little welters who were probably weighing in in their boots and clothes to be above 150. If it worked both ways and he regularly came in at 165 to fight a 175-pounder, sure, but that just didn’t happen.
Delighted to make Klompton’s ignore list. I’ve shown up his gaps and leaps in logic (on this very thread he tries to make the argument that Jake wasn’t mobbed up because he fought on the road and fought black fighters lol) but you can also expand the list of fights where Jake has significant weight advantages if you go to, say, 7 pounds ... and award some “weight bully” bonuses for fights where he was MORE than 10 pounds heavier while fighting well into the 160s against guys barely above welter. Very few true middleweights of note on his resume compared to welters of note. Funny how that works. And light heavyweights? Nah, Jake didn’t want none of being the smaller guy ... he liked to be the bigger bully for sure. Don’t doubt that the mob helped facilitate his advantages. No telling how many guys they had throw fights against him or just stacked the odds (by weight and maybe friendly judges) to take care of their boy.
Where did anyone criticize him specifically for that? Does the fact that he lost to the ATG welter five times and won once when he had an enormous weight advantage mean that he cannot be criticized for his overall career opponents choices (feasting on starving welters while coming in as what we today would call a super middle yet not venturing up to fight bigger men)? Can we not criticize him for his obvious mob ties (throwing fights for his buddies, per Klompton selling his arenas to them at a cut rate — probably to curry favor with his mafia besties — and getting gifted a title shot for throwing said fight) just because he fought Ray Robinson?
The only guy you listed who fought any time during the war was Belloise and he had one fight of note during that period, Holman Williams. My point stands. If you wanted to make money and have big fights you had to be willing to work around the weights. That went for small guys moving up and big guys moving down. Chase, Moore, and Booker were fighting primarily on the west coast during this period. Tunero wasnt even in the United States but for a brief time in which he lost his only two fights. You can say "why didnt he do this and why didnt he do that but just like all of these other mythical matchups sometimes they just arent in the cards. A guy cant fight everybody you want him to. If LaMotta had fought Moore instead of Marshall and Booker instead of Lytell youd be asking why he didnt fight Marshall and Lytell. What other white middleweight of the war years fought anywhere near the competition LaMotta did? So yeah, when I bring up Graziano who got his title shot based on wins over equally protected and inactive welterweights who werent nearly as good as the welterweights LaMotta was fighting its a valid comparison. They were contemporaries. When I bring up Zale fighting a litany of stiffs after the war and losing his title to a guy who was equally protected and spent most of his career as a welterweight its a valid question why LaMotta gets **** on for fighting down against stellar competition but his other white contemporaries get a pass. LaMotta gave more black fighters of that era an opportunity to fight him and earn than any other white middleweight and somehow hes portrayed as cherry picking because he fought a guy that no other white middleweight could beat who is a lock for one of the top three greatest fighters in history. The mental gymnastics it takes to bend reality to the idea that LaMotta was picking and choosing who he fought defies explanation. People love to bring up Burley and act like all of these guys ducked him but then completely ignore that whenever Burley got near a big fight he would put his foot down and demand parity in the purses when he couldnt show the gate receipts to back up such a stance or he would invent a managerial crisis and run to another town. I get sick and tired of the bull**** about how badly Burley was ducked by everyone. The guy was a talented headcase who made people rather watch grass grow and paint dry and his problems getting big fights rest squarely on his shoulders.
