Jake Lammotas win over Bob Satterfield~

Yes I do.

I think you're really missing the forest for the trees here.

The guys with all the backing tend to be the ones getting opponents to take dives for them to build up their reputation, not the ones who have to takes dives

 

Comical Yes! But i have seen similar schemes justified, even today, by supposedly smart people. Not uncommon for them to get away with it either, if no investigations are launched which they usually arent.

I know nothing of the situation, but sometimes you cant always use strict common sense to discover people's true motives.

 

Like I said, youd have to jump through a lot of hoops to believe this as opposed to the more logical and straightforward conclusion. The idea that this would only work if the mafia were this vast criminal conspiracy is kind of antiethical dont you think? Considering the mafias involvement with boxing was exactly a vast international criminal conspiracy and was proven as such by the same investigation that is on this thread being compared to a witch hunt. Thats pretty comical in my opinion.

 

Just off facts and what LaMotta supporters have stated on this thread:

LaMotta lost in 1947 to Cecil Hudson and so lost his top rating. He then admits he made a deal with the Mob to throw the Fox fight in return for a shot at the title. In early 1949 he loses to Dauthuille around the same time Belloise decisively beats Villemain. Matched then with Villemain, his decision win is extremely controversial. In the ratings that spring, LaMotta is #7. He still gets the shot against champion Cerdan in his boxing home away from home, Detroit. LaMotta's supporters post on this thread that LaMotta "paid for the title shot" by bribing the powers that be. A $100,000 payoff is mentioned. All this appears to me to place him right in the middle of the corruption.

I don't know all that much about Gans, but I think it pretty obvious that as a black man in 1900 America, his position was much more tenuous than LaMotta's. LaMotta chose corruption. Gans might well have had no choice.

 

Agree. If anything it just validated what everyone already knew. LaMotta had a concrete chin..

 

I have been busy, but I feel my point of view (which you call an agenda) on these points.

"Tunero"--it is fair that it might have been hard to arrange a fight. "Does anyone regard Tunero in the same light as Robinson" So your point is that fighting and losing most of the time to the welter Robinson gives Jake a pass on fighting dangerous middle contenders? Tunero beat the 164 lb. Ezzard Charles in Cincinnati in 1942. He was obviously a dangerous opponent. As everyone knows LaMotta lost four of five to Robinson from 1942 to 1945. But he also lost 4 of 5 to Marshall, Bolden, and Reeves. There might have been reasons to be choosy with tough middles.

"a good historian knows you don't compare different fighters from different eras the context in which their careers unfolded"

And the context in which LaMotta's career unfolded was the decimation of boxing and other sports by WW2. Fans at the time thought the competition was poor. This seems not only logical but inevitable. That is why I mentioned that baseball pitcher Dizzy Trout winning 27 games in 1944 is not the same as someone like Sandy Koufax winning 27 games in 1966. Trout was pitching against a lot of guys who wouldn't have been in the majors except for the war. It is fair to bring up the war as a reason to fight so many smaller men, but the bottom line is how often did Jake have big weight pulls versus other champions if judged on this basis, such as Fullmer and Olson, or Turpin, or contender contemporaries. It is a factual matter and a valid one.

"Charles and Williams . . . at the time those were not big fights"

They were not highly rated? In the middleweight division?

"You pluck names out of a hat"

These ten men were African-American fighters who appeared in the ratings of the NBA and The Ring. Teddy Yarosz fought them. I see nothing arbitrary about such a list. Oscar Rankins? He had beaten Solly Krieger a year earlier and fought to a split decision loss to Billy Conn. Conn later was quoted as saying that the hardest single punch he was ever hit with was by Rankins. Rankins after losing to Yarosz later won the California light-heavyweight championship against Pat Valentino. He certainly wasn't Al Gainer, but he was a good fighter.

"the more experienced Yarosz was fighting a neophye"

He beat Marshall when Marshall was 26 years old and had 30 fights and had defeated four men who at one time or another were world champions. You can pick out fights he lost, but he continued losing off and on to fighters like Booker, Chase, and Williams right on through the night he easily handled LaMotta.

Bolden defeated Zale twice in 1939 and Zale was rated from late 1938 all through 1939. Zale reached the #5 NBA rating on December 24, 1939. Bolden himself appeared as an honorable mention in the 1939 ratings. The upset of Hostak came in 1940. Zale might not have been on the New York radar but the whole world isn't New York. Zale didn't suddenly emerge on New Year's day, 1940. Bolden record when he fought Yarosz is sometimes listed as 21-5-2, but who knows how many early fights in those days fell through the cracks and are not on the record.

Reeves is your best case, although he defeated Solly Krieger in his next fight. Reeves did eventually make the ratings, but his overall record is 29-17 and he is mainly known for beating LaMotta 2 out of 3.

Yarosz beat all three of these men, while LaMotta never beat Marshall or Bolden, and lost his series with Reeves.

 

"LaMotta was not mob controlled and had to pay through the nose with his reputation and wallet to get a title shot"

What happened to his reputation was his choice. You state that he paid a bribe to the powers that be to get the title shot ahead of the other contenders. LaMotta is not the victim. The other contenders are the victims. You made the case that he got his shot because he could provide the mob with more money than the other contenders.

"snide and petty"

LOL. You have spent an entire thread defending LaMotta's gutter "anything it takes to get what I want" morality, but are now troubled by what you see as snide and petty. You admit he threw a fight for the mob. It is a worthy question whether he bet on Fox to get money which he could later use to pay the bribe to cement himself a title shot over higher rated rival contenders.

"You don't have to inform me of the ratings. I am more familiar than you with them."

I am happy for you. But the amazing depth and breadth of your knowledge isn't the issue. The issue is who were the top contenders when LaMotta got his shot. The fact is that in the last NBA ratings before his title shot, on April 5, 1949, LaMotta was the #7 contender. The issue isn't who knows or doesn't know this or that, but what are the relevant facts. That LaMotta was rated #7 at that point is a relevant fact.

"So to be clear, it's your argument that a guy featured in three of the last four MW title fights" and then on and on about Graziano, ending with a question about what's my position on Graziano. The very post you were quoting contains my answer: "Should it go to the guy who can bring in the biggest gate? The latter is most likely off all evidence Graziano. But I don't think he should have gotten the shot."

"On the one hand you'll argue that LaMotta was looking bad in all those fights but on the other hand he wasn't slipping."

Not exactly what I said. I said he was only 26 in early 1949, and I see no evidence he was ever as good as his supporters maintain.

"he stopped training like he had previously and simply wasn't the same fighter" (you quoting his brother and ex-wife)

You definitely give us a lot of information. So LaMotta was too lazy to train hard and so was "slipping" at 25 or 26. This explains why when he blew the fight to Hudson he made his compact with the mob to get what he wanted.

I must credit you with being honest enough to give us all the info anyone needs to really define Jake.

 

So you you posted this inane word salad to basically arrive at the point I was making: That LaMotta was not mob controlled. Glad we finally got there.

 

This discussion has run its course, but

While you are entitled to your own view, you are not entitled to hijack and distort mine.

I think LaMotta played ball with the mob. He did what they wanted him to do when they wanted him to do it, including taking a dive and paying them under the table. In return he got a shot at the title over rival contenders. What word is used to describe this is pointless parsing. He got in bed with the mob as it served his interest and theirs.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion and providing a lot of inside info on LaMotta.