Boxer LaMotta, immortalized in ’Raging Bull,’ dies at 95
Jake LaMotta, boxing’s “Raging Bull,” who brawled his way to the middleweight boxing championship in a life of unbridled fury within the ring and outside it, and whose life became the subject of an acclaimed film, died Tuesday in Miami. He was 95.
His fiancee of 25 years, Denise Baker, said he died of dysphagia pneumonia at Palm Garden Nursing Home, where he been admitted for hospice care recently.
A “good-for-nothing bum kid” with a terrible temper, as he later described himself, Mr. LaMotta learned to box in an upstate New York reformatory, where he had been sent for attempted burglary. After going undefeated as an amateur after his release, he turned pro in 1941.