If Jake Lamotta never won the world title would he have still been considerd a legend

He was desperate and maybe that's why he settled for the journeyman status. Did he have many children? That's often a deciding factor.

 

Disagree all you want, I don't think you're doing so based on facts. He lost against Marshall who didn't rate him highly, saying Lamotta would lose to the best of the Murders Row. He lost 4 times out of 5 against Robinson - so when was he better than Robinson, when Robinson was 144lbs - not after that. And he fought 5 fights that he split with a Zivic all in . Burley had a far easier time with Zivic down at 147 and Lamotta avoided Burley to face Zivic 'why do I need to fight Burley when I can face Zivic' who Burley comfortably beat. Villemain he went 1-1 with but his win was controversial. Dauthuille he was 1-1 with. He never went much longer than 12months without a loss.

Then bare in mind he didn't face Burley, Eddie Booker, Cocoa Kid, Charles, Moore, Bivins from his era, for whatever reason. An early fight with Prime Williams would have been very interesting too

He didn't beat Holman until he was past his best after 177 fights and that was still close from what I've read. His Lytell win was a controversial SD when he was the house fighter, Lytell at the time was green and unproven.

TBF he didn't take on the best Murderer's Row of his era bar Marshall who'm he lost too, his competition was very good, he was an excellent fighter though, but never the best MW in the world but was in 1 of the best MW eras no doubt

 

not many if i remember correctly but he still had and has a wife and needed money anyway even if he had only himself 2 look 4 which wasn't d case :
Ross Puritty beat Wladimir Klitschko, but his rewards came outside the ring
By SAM MELLINGER
The Kansas City Star
WICHITA | The biggest sports event in the world Saturday will happen 5,000 miles from here, when Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye fight for the heavyweight championship in front of 55,000 fans and a global audience.
Ross Puritty will probably watch from his favorite chair, and, sure, he’ll feel a little bitterness. How could he not? Those men on the television screen will make about $14 million each, fighting for glory and fame.
The 44-year-old man in the chair at home is an assistant high school football coach and personal trainer. Nobody cares much that he once ripped Klitschko’s spirit one night in the ring.
“And I don’t see the result being any different if I fought him again,” Puritty says. “I would still fight him the same today I did back then. I’m not afraid to get hit. Everybody else is afraid to get hit.”
There is truth in those words, at least some, but mostly bravado. Puritty knows this — knows you know it, too.
The moment that will define Puritty in his obituary happened in 1998, when the kid who learned to fight by standing up to gangs beat the undefeated champion.
Puritty’s life should have been transformed that night. Other men have gained fortunes and fame by accomplishing less, but all Puritty has is the title belt they gave him that night. There’s a chip on the bottom from when his kids played with it one day.
The guy he beat is rich and famous now, a night of his time worth millions, while Puritty is left talking about what might have been. So sure, when he watches Klitschko on Saturday night he can’t help a twinge of bitterness rushing back.
But the rest of his story isn’t what you might be expecting.
He’ll tell it to you with a smile.
• • •
Ross Puritty is sitting in a Wichita burger joint now, talking about the hardest he was ever hit. Tommy Morrison, maybe. Or Hasim Rahman. Klitschko could really bring it, too, but you know what?
Now that Puritty thinks about it, the hardest hit he ever took didn’t come in the ring at all. Happened on the streets, on his way to a pickup basketball game. A guy came up from behind and swung a metal baseball bat into the back of Puritty’s head.
He remembers being stunned, but he didn’t drop. Just turned around and heard a ringing noise from the bat, like it had hit a steel bar or something.
“I’ve always been able to take a punch,” he says.
Puritty learned that skill the hard way. He grew up in Phoenix, around the sad urban cliché of drugs and violence. Mom had a habit of not paying rent, so Ross and his five siblings moved every few months.
A big chunk came in various parts of a Hispanic neighborhood and projects building, but Ross spent many of his days playing pickup basketball with black kids at a park nearby. Both groups wanted him in their gang, and as a way to persuade him, took to jumping him every few weeks.
That’s where Ross learned to fight, to stand up to bigger men and absorb punishment. A certain kind of respect came with it, even if he had to keep earning it every few weeks.
Puritty grew to expect the fights, and became content passing the days playing basketball and dealing drugs. He and his friends robbed a convenience store one night, except the cops came and tracked Puritty down in an alley. He remembers the feeling of the officer’s gun cocked against his head, the sounds of the older man cursing him, the fear of death literally in front of his face.
A local coach persuaded him to go out for football one year, and Puritty became ferocious enough as a defensive lineman that he earned a college scholarship and was all-conference at Texas-El Paso.
Boxing came later, and by complete accident. It was just a way to lose weight at first, because an extra 30 pounds gave him chronic back pain. Then one day a local promoter offered him $200 to fight.
“I had nothing better to do,” he says. “So why not?”
• • •
The call interrupted his Thanksgiving dinner. Puritty was home with family in Dodge City, Kan.
Would he like to be a fill-in to fight Klitschko in eight days?
Sure, Puritty figured. Why not?
He went back to dinner, flew to Ukraine that weekend, got in two days of training and walked into a fight nobody imagined him winning. This was Puritty’s place in boxing. He was the guy who would take any fight, anytime, anyplace, and that meant fighting more accomplished opponents on their terms.
Puritty lost half of his first 16 fights this way and had 13 losses when Klitschko’s people called. They wanted a tuneup fight and figured Puritty would be easy enough.
Except by the eighth round, Puritty was still standing in front of the 6-foot-6, 245-pound Klitschko, taking punch after punch after punch — some in the stomach — others to the head, but never quitting.
He punched back when he could until he noticed Klitschko’s eyes fading, his body looking like someone popped a balloon. This was Puritty’s moment, and he started punching as hard as he could until the 11th round, when Klitschko’s trainer stopped the fight.
He had won the biggest fight of his life in basically the same way he beat those gang members back in the Phoenix projects as a kid.
“I had nothing to lose, and that was the big difference,” Puritty says. “He went into this fight privileged, being taken care of. I grew up with nothing. I had nothing to lose. This was it for me.”
Beating Klitschko didn’t change anything for Puritty. He got the same bad offers as before. Even the title he had won was stripped before he had a chance to defend it. Puritty has a few theories.
His record is the most obvious place to start, and the most logical. Except others have used big wins like that to at least get better opportunities. Puritty didn’t have a capable manager, though, and in boxing if nobody has a hold of you, then nobody has anything to gain by you winning.
Puritty continued to take mostly the same bad fights he had before, last-minute offers that topped around $15,000. His final fight came nearly four years ago. He won, pushing his record to 31-20-3, and that’s where it stands today.
“I didn’t retire from boxing,” Puritty says. “Boxing sort of retired me.”
He is smiling as he says this. And now he’s ready to tell you why.
• • •
Boxing saved his life, figuratively if not literally. Puritty can’t prove this, but he knows it. His siblings are still in Phoenix. One sister is paralyzed after being shot in a drug deal gone bad. Another is a recovering drug addict and former prostitute.
There aren’t a lot of happy endings where Puritty comes from, and boxing gave him a chance. It took him away from those projects and random beatings and, eventually, all around the world. Put money in his pocket, introduced him to lifelong friends, taught him crucial lessons about perseverance and hard work.
He’s proud of who he is, of what he stands for. Boxing is a critical part of that, so how could he let bitterness overwhelm him?
The sport also gave him love, and he means this literally. It happened almost 20 years ago, on a flight to Los Angeles when a pretty brunette named Twila struck up a conversation.
“These are things you can’t explain,” Twila says. “My whole visceral world was all atwitter. My stomach was in knots. I couldn’t concentrate on my book. This never happened to me before, just because of a man sitting behind me. I couldn’t not talk to that man.”
Turns out Puritty had a fight in LA, not far from where Twila lived, so he invited her. He lost the fight but took her out to dinner. They spent the whole night together. He slept on her couch and they walked on the beach the next morning. A week later he moved across the country to live with her.
They’ve been together ever since, raising six kids together.
“I brag all the time how much he takes care of us,” Twila says. “I tell people all the time I’m the most spoiled woman I know.”
Twila works in the medical field, a good job that affords them a nice house in a quiet neighborhood and allows Puritty to be something like a stay-at-home dad. He cooks most of the meals, makes sure the kids are where they need to be and in between finds time to coach.
A drawer in his desk is stuffed with letters from kids he’s trained, young boys who learned boxing — and he hopes a little more. Puritty’s current project is a former Wichita State basketball player who can’t always pay. That’s fine by Puritty. He thinks God puts people in different places for specific reasons, and this is what he’s supposed to be doing.
Every now and again, of course he’ll think of that other life, the one that never happened. It’d be nice if he made millions, if he could buy any car, live on any beach. But what if he invested too much of it in real estate and got caught in the foreclosure mess?
Besides, he’s not sure the money would make him happy. He and his family have enough to live a nice life, with dinners together and games on the weekends. He laughs a lot, lights up when he talks about his wife and can go on all day about his kids.
This life would’ve been just as hard to imagine for him 30 years ago as an extended run as world champion, and who’s to say it isn’t just as rewarding?
“I did the best I could,” he says. “I was handed a lemon, and I did the best I could to make lemonade. I lost (an opportunity) in boxing, but I feel like I won in life.”

 

As I said, my views are on my timeline thread.

 

Wrong S. A guy I once saw Jimmy Leto, a WW took on a member of BMR and others and beat Burley. Leto came before Basilio and probably was as good or better...