Jake LaMotta Dead at 95

'Raging Bull' boxer died in nursing home, family tells TMZ
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 20, 2017 9:59 AM CDT
Jake LaMotta Dead at 95
Former middleweight boxing champion Jake LaMotta interacts with people on the field before a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees in 2015 in St. Petersburg, Fla.   (Will Vragovic/The Tampa Bay Times via AP)

Iconic boxing champion Jake LaMotta died Tuesday at age 95. "I just want people to know, he was a great, sweet, sensitive, strong, compelling man with a great sense of humor, with eyes that danced," LaMotta's wife tells TMZ. She says he died of pneumonia complications while in a nursing home; another family member says he had recently been put on a feeding tube but kept pulling it out, and after his condition deteriorated significantly over the past few days, the decision was made to remove the tube.

LaMotta's legendary boxing career started in 1941; he went 83-19-4 in 106 pro fights, with 30 knockouts, per 10 News. He won the world middleweight championship, and in 1990 he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. In his famous six-fight rivalry with Sugar Ray Robinson, he won just one of the fights. Robert De Niro played him in Raging Bull, the 1980 movie based on his autobiography for which De Niro won a Best Actor Oscar. "Raging Bull" was LaMotta's nickname due to his rough style of fighting, per the New York Daily News. (More celebrity death stories.)

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