Boxing champion played by Robert De Niro in Raging Bull

Born: July 10, 1922;

Died: September 19, 2017

JAKE LaMotta, who has died aged 95, was a legendary boxer played by Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's masterpiece Raging Bull, in which the fighter's self-destructive and obsessive life was laid bare. LaMotta's talent as a boxer, honed on the streets of the Bronx during the Great Depression, was never in doubt, but his personal life was constantly mired in personal scandals, including a fight fixed by the Mafia.

Born Giacobbe LaMotta of Italian immigrant parents, he was raised in the Bronx, where – with his father’s encouragement – he started to earn money with his fists in illegal boxing bouts. He first boxed in bootleg bouts when he was just eight years old and on occasion earned enough to pay his parents' rent during the Depression.

As a child, he also ran wild with another street tough Rocco Barnbella, better known as Rocky Graziano, who would go on to win the same world middleweight title as LaMotta did.

Both Graziano and LaMotta were tough as nails, and as well as the street fighting, they earned money through theft and mugging. As youths, they both served time together in prison.

Later in life, Graziano would earn some respectability - he was played by Paul Newman in the autobiographical film Somebody Up Their Likes Me - but LaMotta was much more complicated. In fact, there were always two Jake LaMottas both inside the ropes and in daily life. He was a contradictory personal cocktail of the principled and the profane, the admirable and the execrable.

His nickname - the Bronx Bull - was something of a misnomer. He was a vicious puncher, and at time his jaw seemed impervious to punishment, but LaMotta could box smartly. Witness him stopping Sugar Ray Robinson’s run of 125 consecutive victories when he outpointed him in a 1943 bout.

Similarly, between 1943 and 1944, LaMotta fought and beat the outstanding world welterweight champion Fritzie Zivic three times.

However, personal troubles were never far away, although on the moral credit side, LaMotta refused to draw the colour bar line against dangerous Afro-American boxers, as many other Caucasian champions did. But - typically of LaMotta - in tandem with this admirable contempt for racial discrimination, he - by his own confession - raped at least one woman and was a serial wife beater. He also mugged a Bronx bookie with a lead pipe and believed wrongly that he had murdered him. He learned 20 years after the event that the newspaper publishing the murder report had been wrong - his victim had survived.

For a time, LaMotta also refused to cooperate with the Mafia bosses who controlled all world titles above bantamweight between 1940-57 and was frozen out of a world title shot by refusing, initially, to take part in fixed fights.

However, by 1948, disgusted by continually being passed over for a crack at the world middleweight title held by fellow American Tony Zale, LaMotta finally made a deal with the underworld figures he despised.

LaMotta admitted at the 1960 Kefauver Senate Committee investigating the Mob’s influence in boxing, that in exchange for his eventual world title winning fight with French champion Marcel Cerdan, he had deliberately lost against Billy Fox in 1947 in a Mob organised betting scam. He would later admit that the anger and self loathing he felt at having sold out his personal integrity was one reason why he behaved so violently outside the ring.

However, his greatness as a boxer could not be doubted. He fought the great Ray Robinson so often that he once memorably quipped "I fought Sugar Robinson so often that I got sugar diabetes."

He certainly showed his outstanding bravery and talent while losing his world 11 stone 6lbs title to Robinson in February 1951 on St Valentine’s Day in Chicago, which was dubbed The Second St Valentine’s Day Massacre by boxing writers.

Ahead in the early rounds, LaMotta was stopped after demonstrating his legendary durability for 13 rounds when he had to be rescued by the referee. Still La Motta clearly bore Robinson no grudges - when LaMotta married wife number six, Robinson was the best man.

Another of LaMotta’s epic fights was against the French conqueror Laurant Dauthille, in their 1950 world tile joust, when LaMotta came from behind after being outclassed for 14 rounds. He stopped the Frenchman with just 13 seconds to go until the final bell.

Shunned as a pariah by American boxing’s establishment after the Billy Fox fight fixing scandal, they eventually forgave him by inducting him into the International Hall of Boxing Fame in 1990 along with his former nemesis Sugar Ray Robinson.

The film Raging Bull also helped to further rehabilitate LaMotta. The film was based on the 1970 biography Raging Bull - My Story, which De Niro, who played LaMotta, had brought to Martin Scorsese's attention.

The resulting film was warts and all, with De Niro's brutally honest portrayal winning him an Oscar, but it also provided a new career for the real LaMotta, who was soon much in demand as an after-dinner speaker.

BRIAN DONALD