Robinson Had the Rage to Again Beat LaMotta

Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta were made to fight each other. Their fights were classics, and they always made money. That’s why they fought six times (Robinson won five).

Forty-eight years ago today, in their final meeting, welterweight champion Robinson won the world middleweight championship for the first time with a 13th-round technical knockout over LaMotta, before 14,802 who paid $180,619.64 at Chicago Stadium to see yet another savage battle.

Robinson, the master boxer with the big punch, employed a tactic of spearing the bull-like LaMotta with pinpoint jabs, then retreating from LaMotta’s rushes.

It worked. Then Robinson went after LaMotta in the ninth with heavy fire and the tide was quickly turned. LaMotta, who’d had difficulty making 160 pounds (Robinson was 155 1/2), was nearly helpless in the late rounds, yet was on his feet when the referee stopped it.

LaMotta was proud of the fact he’d never been knocked off his feet, and the moment was captured in the film “Raging Bull” when, at the finish, LaMotta taunted Robinson through his bloody mouth: “Ya didn’t put me down, Ray. . . . Ya didn’t put me down.”

Also on this date: In 1972, when asked if he could foresee a day when pro athletes could compete in the Olympic Games, IOC Chief Avery Brundage responded: “(Pros) will never be admitted to the Olympics--never, never, never.” . . . In 1942, Cornelius Warmerdam pole vaulted 15-7 1/4 in Boston to break the world record. . . . In 1983, USC’s John Robinson became coach of the L.A. Rams. . . . In 1937, the Jewish War Veterans of America announced they were organizing a nationwide boycott of German Max Schmeling’s fights.