December 16 of 1940, a J. LaMotta is fighting a Jimmy Miller for the newspaper-sponsored amateur Diamond Belt at LHW Novice category, becoming one of twenty-four Diamond Belt champeens crowned on the night. Thing is, I'm not sold on "J" being Jack (Jake), though it seems people are crediting it to his very brief time as an amateur. Jake debuted at eighteen years of age only a couple months before this bout, and he'd turn over to the pro game within three more months of it. [url]It's not mentioned on his amateur BoxRec[/url], and the site has no amateur bouts recorded for that day. However, that day's Brooklyn Daily Eagle mentions it as an upcoming bout and states Miller's opponent as "Joe LaMotta", who was then only 15. Tender age, but that doesn't necessarily rule him out. Could the newspaper report have gotten the brothers mixed up? I haven't read Jake's book since I was a teenager, and I don't have my old copy to hand – can anyone tell me if this bout is mentioned in it? It does look like Joey to me, but I'm open to being proved wrong, and I'd love some old survivor with contemporaneous knowledge to pop up and shed light on the matter. Here's the footage of the bout in question (mistakenly tagged as 1939, if this is indeed LaMotta-Miller); This content is protected @reznick also uses it in his very excellent Human Truck Highlight (the same sequence of J. LaMotta dropping and then consoling his opponent, shown from two different camera angles at 0:47 and 1:02); This content is protected
You might be on to something. If this fight was really in December, 1940, and the dates aren't off, Jake would have made his debut in only a few months at 168. This youngster doesn't look that heavy at all at Jake's height. What looks like Jake is his reliance on his left hand. What doesn't look like Jake is the guy's face. He just seems like a different man, both in build and facially. There is a still photo of a youngish Joey at boxrec and this man looks more like Joey. Also, he seems for Jake, if this fight was really held just a few months before Jake turned pro, very crude stylistically. I have never seen film of Joey fighting. Was he as left handed dependent as his brother? Does anyone know?
This is Jake. Jake had a very short amateur career before turning pro, the highlight of which was winning the diamond belt tournament which this bout was a part of. There are three newsreel films of this fight. One of them is narrated and the narrator names him Jack LaMotta which is what Jake was often called. Furthermore this is a light heavyweight bout. Jake turned pro at light heavyweight before dropping down to middleweight while Joey was a natural welterweight who moved up to middleweight for financial reasons but regretted it because he had difficulty dealing with the bigger fighters there. I admit this looks like Joey but Jake looked a lot more like Joey early in his career before he had his features, particularly his nose, battered out of shape.
These observations reflect my own thinking, although I made allowances for this J. LaMotta's rawness as compared to the excellent technician we see in footage of Jake's professional bouts. Like you, I've never seen Joey fight and was wondering whether or not he was a converted southpaw (ergo with a very dominant left hand) like his elder brother. Thanks for the post. Thank you, too, for posting. I did make some allowance for this ^, which is why I wasn't categorical about it being Joey. I'd love to see that narrated newsreel film. Do you know which company put it together? Here's the Brooklyn Daily Eagle clipping, by the way, which, if this is Jake, would have to be a reporting mix-up; [url]https://img.techpowerup.org/200424/bde.jpg[/url] Your point re. the weight is a compelling one. I know that the younger brother turned pro around 4 years after Jake and around about a stone lighter. As Jason said, the LaMotta in the clip looks light/slight. I realize Jake was only eighteen at that time and still developing physically, of course. Do you know anything you could share about Joey's amateur background, when he first started to compete, at which weight, etc? I'm just looking to eliminate any nagging grain of doubt (as a newsreel narration, like a newspaper article, could theoretically have mixed up the LaMotta brothers). Incidentally, I realize I was being very optimistic in hoping that a centenarian (or nearly centenarian) witness might see my post and pop up.
Jake even recounts this fight in his biography Raging Bull. Its not Joey. Jakes limited amateur career was fairly well documented in the papers at the time including the run up to him entering this tournament and when he turned pro it was mentioned that he had won the diamond belt. Universal Newsreel put out one of the newsreels that Ive seen of it but that version doesnt have any sound if I recall correctly. Bill Stern is the announcer of the one where he names Jake. In Joey's unpublished biography he mentions Jake winning the Diamond belt and a few sentences later talks about beginning boxing in 1942. Id have to dig through my files to figure out what weight Joey boxed at as an amateur but I know he wasnt as big as Jake. Like I said, he mentions several times how he regretted moving up in weight because the middleweights were too big for him but middleweight was a marquee division and there was more money there. The Lamotta in the clip might look lighter than Jake but thats actually a light heavyweight bout. Jake was probably weighing at least ten pounds above the weight you are used to seeing him at. Also this was 9 years and about 90 fights before the most commonly available footage of Jake so its not really surprising that he looks different. If this had been Joey he would have written about it in his biography which was pretty self serving and self aggrandizing. He would have loved to have taken a little credit for something like that for himself.
This is all good stuff. You've sold me with the matter of Joey's unpublished book (which I didn't know existed); an idea of when Joey started competing as an amateur was exactly the kind of info I was looking for. It's been too long since I read Jake's book, and I didn't have my copy handy, so I was hoping someone else who'd read it might recall if this was mentioned in its pages (I just remember dramatic details that weren't covered by Scorsese's movie, like the mugging of the bookie which came back to haunt Jake years later). Annoying that the only clipping I've been able to find is the one that refers to Jake as Joe. Yeah, about the weight, he actually looks less stocky at the heavier division. I'd be interested to know what Jake was actually tipping the scale at as an amateur light heavy, do you know if he was weighing in significantly under the limit (say, 165-170 or so)?
