The Bull Meets the Best

Jake LaMotta, middleweight champion of the world up to last week, is a stolid, truculent fighter with a good punch and a Gibraltar jaw. In 95 fights, deep-chested Jake has never been knocked off his feet. For this combination of qualities, Jake is nicknamed "The Bronx Bull." It was Jake's misfortune last week to defend his title for 13 rounds against Sugar Ray Robinson, the welterweight* champion, a man for whom no completely adequate nickname has yet been invented. Pound for pound, Sugar Ray is the best fighter now wearing gloves. Meeting him in Chicago Stadium, Jake the Bull had his finest hour, but it wasn't fine enough.

Jake's strategy was the only one he ever knew: wade in and throw punches. The difficulty was connecting solidly. Once in a while Jake landed a hard one, and in the fifth, with a heavy right, he drew blood from Sugar's nose and made his hair stand on end. But a lot of other LaMotta punches, good when they left the shoulder, found the elusive Sugar going away.

Meanwhile, Sugar's long left fist had been poking out, flush and regularly, into the solid features of Jake the Bull; Jake began to show signs of wear. In the ninth, Sugar turned loose his right. From then on, the question was not whether Jake could win but whether he could preserve his ten-year record of never having been knocked flat.

No Intervention. For Jake LaMotta, making the best fight of his plodding career, the eleventh and twelfth rounds were nightmares: Sugar Ray hit him with everything--jabs, hooks, straight rights, curving, underhand bolo punches--from the most varied locker of punches in boxing. Any ordinary fight would have been stopped by the referee in the eleventh, but Jake, truculently determined not to be counted out, had warned the referee beforehand not to intervene. At 2:04 of the 13th, as Robinson was beginning to show an obvious distaste for the one-sided slaughter, the referee stopped the fight. The finish found a pulp-faced vacant-eyed Jake LaMotta backed to the ropes and holding on--but still on his feet.

Jake's blonde wife Vicki, a top contender in the "Mrs. America" beauty contest last year, was at the ringside, but could not watch the last two or three rounds. "I just put my head down and covered my face with my hands," she said. "I was glad when they stopped it."

No Pain. Sugar Ray's hair was mussed, but he was feeling no pain. He stepped to the microphone and made a perky little speech consisting entirely of a plug for the Damon Runyon Memorial Cancer Fund (he had just been appointed an honorary member).

At 29, the new middleweight champion isn't sure where his next fight is coming from. For one thing, there are no other middleweights around able to give him more than a good workout. Sugar's manager said something about matching his 155-lb. man against Joey Maxim, world light-heavyweight champion, who fights at 174.

Sugar was asked about this. "Look," said he, "I'm not lookin' toward nothin'. That's my manager talkin'."

But from the fan's standpoint, such a fight would have more appeal than anything else Sugar could do next. Promoters are already trying to line one up.

*Boxing divisions, with top weights: heavyweight, unlimited; light-heavyweight, 175 Ibs.; middleweight, 160; welterweight, 147; lightweight, 135; featherweight, 126; bantamweight, 118; flyweight, 112.

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