De Niro Could have fought Professionaly?

Jake lamotta was how old..?

 

that's pretty ****ing sweet.

 

We don't know what kind of chin or cut resistance De Niro might have had as a competitor, but the quality of training LaMotta gave him is reputed to have been first rate. Jake was in his late 50s, and enjoying good health when putting De Niro through his paces. A dozen years later, De Niro went through another intensive regimen to reduce his body fat to 9% for the remake of Cape Fear, and I imagine he drew on his earlier conditioning experience with Raging Bull to help him get to that level of leanness. Call it method acting or obsessive-compulsive disorder, but whatever it is, he does nothing half way.

 

Awesome!

 

Peewee Herman could have fought professionally.

He just wouldn't have won.

 

Who knows? But DeNiro is a method actor of the highest order, and there's no doubt in my mind he put in some hard yards for that role.

 

I'm sure he went a 1,000 rounds.

A thousand rounds against a 50 some year old LaMotta and... who else again?

I don't know how many people actually understand how many rounds a thousand is.

Bernard Hopkin's has only gone 420 rounds in his entire ****ing 22 year career. :-(

 

They are talking sparring.
Hopkins has done thousands upon thousands.

 

Robert DeNiro exuberates rage in so many of his roles. Makes one wonder if he has it in real life. If so, boxing would be very therapeutic for him.

 

People will believe anything as long as it's about a celebrity.

Even if he sparred 6 rounds per day, which is LOT for a normal person, and took the weekend off, then that would mean 7 months of sparring 6 rounds, day in, day out.

Even journeyman level, which many laugh at on this board, is very high and for anybody. But hey, dream on to believe that your idol can not only act, but also box.

 

Filming of Raging Bull was a very long process. 1000 rounds might be an exaggeration, but it could well be close to the truth.
A "round of sparring" needn't be all-out hard, it can be mostly semi-contact or light-contact. I doubt DeNiro was taking punches, and LaMotta was just teaching him moves.
I know several fitness enthusiasts and amateurs who do that type of volume of working out, and hold down 9-to-5 jobs, ordinary Joes. And they do it year in, year out.

Define "journeyman level".
Truth is, there are lots of "pro" boxers who barely train, aren't fit, and dont have much talent at all.
And just because someone's an actor or a recreational fitness enthusiast doesn't mean they cant get in shape and competent enough to pass as a professional boxer.

 

Yeah, I had this discussion with my brother who had heard the quote. He doesn't box himself and I tried to tell what it takes, how relatively good you have to be just to compete at an amateur level, never mind a professional one. To start training in your late 30's and hop to make pro...

And how long did he train for? One year tops. Turning pro in your late 30's after only one year of training and no amateur matches... That just isn't done.

 

Yeah, I agree..the "DeNiro's the MAN in acting..he played LaMotta..YEAH...he could have been a boxer too!!!!" A little too much enthusiasm here. For my money, NO boxing movie is especially realistic in the fight scenes..rigid necks have the heads violently taking the impact of EVERY punch thrown in a movie..nobody can miss with a punch and every punch lands brutally hard..in the case of Raging Bull, a cut opens up like a carotid artery being ruptured..the most realistic punch ever landed IMO is in "The Harder They Fall".. that right in the dressing room that Jersey Joe Walcott decked Toro Moreno with to show him that he couldn't take a punch...that's right...Jersey Joe Walcott threw the most realistic punch in the history of boxing movies. More realistic than all of the overwrought, comicbook blockbusters thrown in all the Rocky movies and Raging Bull, just to name a few.