Sugar Ray Robinson vs. Jake LaMotta

 

Jim Norris, a gregarious, bushy-browed Irishman, was co-owner with Arthur Wirtz of the Blackhawks and Chicago Stadium, owner of numerous thoroughbreds, and, for more than a decade, the de facto czar of boxing. As president of the International Boxing Club (IBC), Norris arranged and promoted 47 of the 51 championship bouts held in the United States between 1949 and 1955. He was also creator of “Friday Night Fights,” which was broadcast live from the Stadium and became one of the most popular television shows of the fifties.

 

JAKE LaMOTTA AND SUGAR RAY ROBINSON.

One of the highlights of Norris’s reign was the sensational middleweight title bout between Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta on February 14, 1951, which went down in Chicago boxing lore as “the second St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

When Robinson stepped into the Chicago Stadium ring that night, his record as a professional was a stupendous 122-1. LaMotta was responsible for the “1”—he had defeated Sugar Ray in the second of their five meetings in the early 1940s. Now, after six years, their paths crossed again because Robinson had outgrown the welterweight class, of which he was world champion, in two ways—it was difficult for him to stay under the 147-pound weight limit, and it was impossible for him to find worthy challengers.

Both fighters were 29 years old, but that was all they had in common. Robinson was tall, lean, lithe, and even elegant; he was now carrying 154 pounds on his five-foot-11 frame, but his chest was only 36½ inches and his waist 28½. LaMotta was built like a fireplug; though only five-foot-eight, he sported a 42-inch chest and 33-inch waist. After strenuously reducing for several weeks, he came into the fight just half a pound below the middleweight maximum of 160.

The fight drew a crowd of 14,802 and a national television audience of millions. From the opening bell, LaMotta forced the issue. The man later portrayed by Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull stalked Robinson, battering him with body blows and forcing him to retreat from lefts to the head. LaMotta dominated for the first eight rounds.

The tide turned in the ninth. Now LaMotta’s spirit was willing, but not his body. All of a sudden he was a stationary target for Robinson’s harassing jabs and punishing shots to the midsection throughout the ninth and 10th rounds. LaMotta flashed back to life in the 11th, briefly backing Robinson into a corner and flailing at him with both hands. When Sugar Ray broke free, he took command for good. “I came out fast and got going after that,” he said.

“LaMotta was finished,” Wilfrid Smith wrote in the Tribune, “but he would not quit. Throughout the 12th round Robinson hit the fading champion with either hand. He jabbed and hooked and all that saved LaMotta was an ingrained desire to walk toward the man who dealt him punishment.” LaMotta did not land a meaningful punch in the 12th, but he absorbed plenty. Late in the round, Robinson was hammering him so savagely that George Gainford, Robinson’s manager, yelled, “Stop the fight! Stop the fight!” Referee Frank Sikora, however, did not act.

LaMotta had never been knocked down in his career, and against Robinson he retained this distinction by sheer stubbornness. By the 13th round he was virtually defenseless. For two minutes Sikora glanced nervously at the Illinois boxing commissioners sitting ringside, as if looking for advice, while Robinson continued to pound LaMotta. Jake was bleeding from the mouth and from the left eye when he staggered back against the ropes with his arms at his sides. Finally, Sikora moved in and stopped the contest.

     Robinson was awarded a technical knockout. It was later suggested that LaMotta’s reputation for occasional brutality in the ring had led Sikora and the other officials, perhaps unconsciously, to allow him a taste of his own medicine before calling a halt to the carnage.           

     “You never got me down, Ray,” LaMotta said as the two fighters bumped gloves. (This was memorably re-enacted by DeNiro in Raging Bull.) “You never got me down.” 

     Back in the locker room, LaMotta admitted that this had been the toughest of his six fights with Sugar Ray. “I just ran out of gas,” he said. He had lost 17 pounds in the past few weeks, including four pounds the day before the bout. The drastic weight loss had sapped his strength, and no fighter could hope to beat Sugar Ray Robinson at less than a hundred percent.

It took more than two hours for the exhausted LaMotta to summon the energy to get dressed and leave the Stadium. Robinson spent a portion of that time soaking his left hand in a bucket of ice. “No bones broken,” Dr. Vincent Nardiello assured reporters. “He just hit Jake so hard and so often with it that it’s thoroughly bruised.” 

 

  

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The Long Count

     The bout between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey at Soldier Field 93 years ago today, on September 22, 1927, still resonates. It remains among the most famous heavyweight title fights of all time, arguably exceeded only by the epic first meeting of Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali in 1971. There are several reasons why this is so.        First, 1927 was the year that the American cult of celebrity was born. Not coincidentally, it was the year of Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic and Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs, as well as the Tunney-Dempsey contest. Because exhaustive coverage by newspapers, newsreels, and radio enabled millions of people to follow these events much more closely than would have been possible just a few years before, Lindbergh and the rest became the first modern superstars.  

     Second, the Tunney-Dempsey fight took on aspects of a morality play. Tunney had served with the Marine Corps in France during World War I; Dempsey had remained out of uniform and in the States (that he was the sole support of his mother and siblings did not sway those who called him a “slacker”). Tunney was a devotee of Shakespeare who spent his spare time in quiet contemplation; Dempsey was a high-living lover of wine, women, and song. Tunney was nicknamed “Gentleman Gene,” Dempsey “the Manassa Mauler.” The fight was described in the press as brains vs. brawn, cunning vs. brute strength, craftsman vs. killer.

Third, and most importantly, the bout featured the notorious “long count”—perhaps the single most controversial incident in the ancient and invariably controversial history of boxing.

 

REFEREE DAVE BARRY COUNTS OVER GENE TUNNEY.

Dempsey was a copper miner, lumberjack, and dance-hall bouncer near his family home in Manassa, Colorado, before he entered the fight game. He rose like a rocket through the heavyweight ranks, earning a shot against champion Jess Willard on July 4, 1919.

The six-foot-six, 245-pound Willard had fought only once since wresting the title from the legendary Jack Johnson in 1915, and he was no match for Dempsey. The 187-pound challenger floored Willard seven times in the first round, then left the ring in triumph as the champion was counted out. It was determined, though, that the count of 10 had come after the bell, so the fight continued. Willard’s reprieve was brief and painful; Dempsey battered him mercilessly for two more rounds before Jess murmured “I guess I’m beaten” prior to the fourth.

     Dempsey had a grand time as champion. He married a gorgeous actress, Estelle Taylor, and the two toured the country, appearing on stage for $7,000 a week. He also played himself in a series of low-budget movies. He managed to find the time to defend his title just five times in seven years, studiously avoiding the most formidable contender, Harry Wills, who happened to be black. Dempsey later asserted that he’d been ordered by the government not to take on Wills in light of the racial climate in the country at that time; Johnson’s incendiary reign as champion had aroused white racists from coast to coast.

     Dempsey had been idle for more than three years when he stepped into the ring against Tunney on September 23, 1926, in Philadelphia. He was only 31, but his lax approach to training had taken its toll. Tunney, a 29-year-old New Yorker, peppered Dempsey with jabs, crosses, and an occasional hook while adroitly steering clear of danger himself. Dempsey spent much of the time flailing at empty spaces left by the quick, evasive Tunney. At the end of the 10 rounds, Dempsey’s left eye was closed and his face a bloody mask. He was thoroughly beaten, and no one questioned the judges when they awarded Tunney a unanimous decision.

 Tunney had hardly climbed out of the ring with the title when the public began hollering for a rematch. His excellent performance was not considered a fluke, but Dempsey’s dismal showing was.

 

The clamor for a rematch and, especially, the huge sums of money offered proved irresistible. The second Tunney-Dempsey fight was scheduled for Chicago, 364 days after their initial encounter. It would be Tunney’s first title defense and Dempsey’s chance to become the first man to win the title for a second time.  

The rematch was the most ballyhooed sporting event ever seen up to that time. For weeks prior to the bout, newspapers reported every detail from Tunney’s training camp at Cedar Crest Country Club in Lake Villa and Dempsey’s at the Lincoln Fields racetrack (later known as Balmoral Park) in Crete. Both fighters closed camp the morning of the bout and drove to Chicago for the weigh-in. Tunney tipped the scales at 189½ pounds, Dempsey was three pounds heavier. Each man, of course, expressed total confidence in the outcome. 

Dempsey: “I am ready for Gene Tunney this time. I will win decisively. I think I am good enough now to finish Tunney inside of seven rounds. If he happens to last the limit, I am sure I will be far enough out in front to win the decision. If Tunney will stand up and fight, it will not take long. If I have to chase him I will catch up with him. I want the referee, whoever he is, to make us fight and give me all that is coming to me, nothing more.”

Tunney: “I have reached the very peak of condition and am without a bruise or any hurt on the eve of the battle. I am even more certain I will win than I was when I first engaged Dempsey at Philadelphia last year. I feel as a result of another year of study and application, I have improved considerably and will win without any great difficulty. I hope and expect our contest will be a fairly and cleanly waged battle which will merit the attention given it by the greatest crowd ever gathered to see a sporting event.”

 

At Soldier Field, folding chairs and wooden plank benches were arrayed in the grass around the ring, augmenting the permanent stands and swelling capacity to 163,000 (assuming, as the promoters did, that the average spectator on the plank benches was only 17 inches wide). The $40 “ringside” seats extended for 117 rows from the ring. The top row of seats in the north end zone was 313 rows, or about 600 feet, from the action; these seats went for $5.

People who were there said what they remembered most was the brilliant light in which the fighters were bathed. Dozens of cone-shaped fixtures were suspended directly above the ring, sending columns of white light onto the canvas. “All is darkness in the muttering mass of crowd beyond the spotlight,” Graham McNamee intoned to the radio audience. “The crowd is thickening in the seats. It’s like the Roman Colosseum.”

Estimates of the crowd varied widely, from a low of 105,000 to a high of 150,000. This mass of humanity produced gate receipts of $2,658,600—establishing a record that stood for over 40 years. Dempsey received $450,000, Tunney slightly less than $1 million. (Dempsey had earned about $900,000 to Tunney’s $200,000 in their first fight, the most lucrative in history prior to their second.)

     The weather was cool, around 55 degrees, with a gentle breeze from the lake. The crowd paid almost no attention to the four preliminary bouts, but came to life when Dempsey appeared at 9:55 p.m. He bounced around the ring and chatted nonchalantly with Mayor Big Bill Thompson while waiting for Tunney, who made his entrance some five minutes later. Dempsey and Tunney shook hands and said a few words to one another.

“They’re getting the gloves out of a box tied with pretty blue ribbon,” McNamee informed his listeners. Then it was time to get down to business. “Robes are off,” he cried. “The bell!” As in the earlier fight, Dempsey was the aggressor. The methodical Tunney was content to backpedal and feint, patiently looking for openings. When he saw one, he struck quickly and danced away before Dempsey could effectively retaliate. Throughout the early rounds, Tunney stayed out of trouble and piled up points. Time and again, he lured Dempsey in too close, then nailed him with a straight left to the forehead followed by a right cross to the jaw. By general consensus, the champion won each of the first five rounds.

Dempsey emphasized body blows early in the fight, but these had little impact. He went for the head from the sixth round on, realizing that he would probably need a knockout in order to win. He scored twice in the sixth with wicked lefts to the jaw, and most observers gave him a narrow edge in that round.

Dempsey continued to attack in the seventh. He came out of his corner with renewed enthusiasm and caught Tunney against the west ropes almost at once. Tunney missed with a right cross. Then Dempsey delivered a left hook to the jaw, followed by a right cross that landed as Tunney was already falling to the canvas. “What a surprise!” Tunney wrote in his autobiography. Dazed, Tunney sat on his haunches with his left arm looped around the middle rope. Dempsey stood over him menacingly, eager to finish him off if and when he got back to his feet.

Referee Dave Barry did not begin to count over Tunney until Dempsey retreated to a neutral corner, per the rule that is meant to prevent a man from being struck while he’s down. Between four and five seconds elapsed before Barry began counting. “Meantime,” Harvey Woodruff wrote in the Tribune, “champion Gene, whose title seemed [to be] slipping from his grasp, rose on one knee and, with his senses rapidly recuperating, coolly awaited the count of nine before arising to his feet.”

 

The notorious “long count” was that simple. There was no question that Tunney was on the floor for 13 to 14 seconds—when 10, of course, is enough to register a knockout. But there was also no question that Dempsey was tardy in moving away from his fallen opponent. He had stood over Tunney for several seconds with his right arm cocked. Barry correctly interpreted the rule which stated, “Should the boxer on his feet fail to stay in the [neutral] corner, the referee and the timekeeper shall cease counting until he has so retired.”

Tunney always maintained that he could have gotten up whenever he pleased. “I was not hurt,” he said, “but considered it just as well to take my time about arising.” When the fight resumed, Dempsey attacked relentlessly, but Tunney held him off with body blows. Dempsey chased Tunney around the ring, derisively motioning for him to stand and fight. Tunney kept on moving. Soon his head was clear of cobwebs, and he managed to deliver a right to Dempsey’s jaw and a left to the midsection just before the bell.

By surviving the seventh round, Tunney had recovered the momentum. He scored a knockdown of his own in the eighth with an overhand right cross to Dempsey’s head. Jack popped back up after a count of one, but he was wobbly as the bout continued. Tunney shot a series of lefts to the jaw, then rocked Dempsey with lefts and rights to the head. The bell sounded with the two fighters toe-to-toe in the center of the ring and the fans on their feet, roaring.

Tunney was in command the rest of the way. Dempsey, desperate by now, repeatedly resorted to illegal “rabbit punches” to the back of the champion’s head throughout the later rounds. Like his legitimate blows, however, they did little damage. Most uncharacteristically, Tunney threw caution to the wind. Sensing that Dempsey was tired and wounded, he abandoned his dancing and forced the issue. He advanced on the challenger and banged away virtually at will in the ninth round, opening a nasty cut above Dempsey’s left eye. In the 10th, the frustrated Dempsey wrestled Tunney to the floor. When he got back up, Tunney landed five left jabs to the face without being hit in return.

Dempsey knew he needed a knockout, but as the clock ticked down he simply did not have the strength to throw anything but a few token punches. Tunney showered him with a barrage of left and right hooks in the closing seconds. If the bell had come any later, Dempsey almost certainly would have ended up on the canvas. 

Tunney won a unanimous decision. “It simply was a case,” Walter Eckersall wrote in the Tribune, “of a boxer, who was much faster, winning a 10-round decision over a fighter who always commands respect because of his punching power.”

Dempsey and his supporters, naturally, complained bitterly about the long count. “It appeared they gave Tunney a generous count in the seventh,” Dempsey said, “just enough extra time to let him get his bearings and climb back on his bicycle.” Dempsey’s manager, Leo P. Flynn, declared that Tunney had retained the title “by grace of what was either a queer decision or a colossal case of inefficiency in the simple matter of counting seconds.” Flynn was just warming up. “Even if Tunney could have got to his feet at the end of an up-and-up count,” he said, “Jack would have floored him again. He needed those extra five seconds mighty bad.”

Flynn filed a formal protest, which was denied. At the time, his and Dempsey’s grievances were written off as sour grapes. Over the years, though, the controversy surrounding the long count grew until it nearly overshadowed the estimable careers of the two principals, both of whom deserved to be ranked among the great heavyweights.

 

“Some folks are saying that I should fight Dempsey again,” Tunney said the day after the fight in Soldier Field. “I don’t agree with them. I have beaten him twice and I see no reason why the public should want to see us matched again.” With that, Dempsey retired; his record was 62-6-10, with 49 knockouts. He became a sort of professional celebrity and opened a successful nightclub in New York. Tunney fought only once more, earning a technical knockout of Tom Heeney on July 26, 1928. He then hung up his gloves, married a Connecticut society woman, and embarked on a tour of Europe’s art museums and literary haunts. His record was 65-1-1, with 47 knockouts.

      Tunney and Dempsey had a reunion of sorts during World War II. Both served in the Pacific (Tunney as a commander in the Navy and Dempsey as a commander in the Coast Guard), conducting physical training courses. Dempsey even saw combat duty on the island of Tarawa, putting to rest once and for all the questions about his patriotism that had dogged him for over 25 years.  

 

 

Check out our book Heydays: Great Stories in Chicago Sports on Amazon.