February 14, 1951, 75 years ago: The Middleweight Championship of the World is contested at the Chicago Stadium. It is a brutal fight, one that brought up memories of a previous February 14, in 1929, when Chicago crime boss Al Capone had members of rival Bugs Moran's gang killed. Like that event, this fight gets the nickname "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre."
Walker Smith Jr., born in Georgia and raised in Manhattan's Harlem, fought under the name Sugar Ray Robinson. He fought professionally 75 times before first winning a title, the Welterweight Championship of the World, by beating Tommy Bell in 1946. In those 75 fights, he had only 1 loss and 1 draw.
Giacobbe LaMotta, nicknamed Jake, was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and grew up in The Bronx. "The Bronx Bull" had to fight even more times to get a title shot, going 72-13-3 before winning the Middleweight Championship of the World in 1949, beating French fighter Marcel Cerdan at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (It was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.)
In 1970, LaMotta wrote a memoir, Raging Bull. In 1980, Martin Scorcese made a film of it, and Robert de Niro won an Academy Award for playing LaMotta, making him a star -- though hardly a role model -- to a new generation. He became a popular after-dinner speaker, with lines like, "I fought Sugar Ray so often, I almost got diabetes!"
They fought 6 times. Here were the 1st 5:
* 1. October 2, 1942, at the old Madison Square Garden. Robinson won a unanimous decision after 10 rounds.
* 2. February 5, 1943, at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. Also a decision after 10 rounds, but, this time, LaMotta won. This would be the only defeat in Robinson's 1st 133 fights: Going in, he was 40-0.
* 3. February 26, 1943, also at the Olympia. Just 3 weeks later, it went the full 10 rounds, and Robinson was declared the winner.
* 4. February 23, 1945, at Madison Square Garden. Another 10-round win by decision for Robinson.
* 5. September 26, 1945, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. It went 12 rounds, and Robinson won by a split decision.
By February 14, 1951, LaMotta had defended the Middleweight Championship 6 times, and was 78-14-3. Robinson was 121-1-2, and had willingly given up the Welterweight Championship to move up in weight class and take the Middleweight title. To do it, he would have to fight LaMotta for a 6th time, at Chicago Stadium, home of the NHL's Chicago Black Hawks (the NBA's Bulls hadn't been founded yet), and already the site of some big fights.
The fight was not really a contest. Although LaMotta was one of the hardest hitters the fight game has ever known, Robinson was a smarter fighter. Some boxing historians have considered him to be "pound-for-pound, the greatest boxer who ever lived." They rank him ahead of Heavyweight Champions Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali; and ahead of the Welterweight and Middleweight Champions who dominated the early 1980s: Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Durán, and a man who would alter his real name to evoke memories of Robinson, Sugar Ray Leonard.
Robinson outboxed LaMotta for the first 10 rounds, then unleashed a series of savage combinations on LaMotta for 3 rounds. In the 13th round, he dealt LaMotta his 1st legitimate knockout loss in 95 professional bouts. (LaMotta had lost by knockout to Billy Fox earlier in his career. However, that fight was later ruled to have been fixed.) Because of the date, the location in Chicago, and its brutality, the fight became known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
The people of France hated LaMotta for beating Cerdan, even more so when Cerdan, trying to fly back across the Atlantic Ocean for a rematch, was killed in a plane crash. Robinson went to Europe after beating LaMotta, bringing his pink Cadillac on the cruise ship with him, and was wildly cheered in Paris as the man who had avenged Cerdan.
It was a working vacation: He kept fighting. He fought in Paris, Zürich, Antwerp, Berlin and Turin. But on July 10, just 9 days after his Turin fight, and getting into the ring for the 7th time in as many weeks, Robinson took his 129-1-2 record into the Earl's Court Arena in London, and lost his title to British boxer Randy Turpin.
He got the title back from Turpin, 3 months later at the Polo Grounds in New York. He ended up winning and losing the Middleweight title 5 times. In 1952, he tried to move up to the Light Heavyweight Championship, but in a brutally hot Yankee Stadium, the Champion, Joey Maxim, defeated him. For the rest of his life, people told Maxim the only reason he lost is that Robinson couldn't handle the heat. "Maybe you think it wasn't hot for me," he told such people.
Sugar Ray Robinson last won a title fight in 1958, last lost one in 1961, and finally retired in 1965, at the age of 44, with a record of 174-19-6. He ran a restaurant in Harlem, but developed dementia, probably as a result of having had nearly 200 professional fights, and died in 1989.
Jake LaMotta never had another title fight after getting destroyed by Robinson in Chicago. He kept fighting until 1954, retiring with a record of 83-19-4. He ran a bar in Miami, and became an actor, before writing his memoir and going on the after-dinner circuit. He died in 2017.
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