‘Raging Bull’ boxer Jake LaMotta dead at 95

NEW YORK: Jake LaMotta, the legendary former world middleweight boxing champion whose wild life and times inspired the Oscar-winning movie “Raging Bull,” has died at age 95, his family announced Wednesday.

LaMotta, an iconic figure from boxing’s 1950s golden age best known for a brutal six-fight rivalry with Sugar Ray Robinson, passed away on Tuesday, the boxer’s daughter Christi LaMotta said on Facebook.

LaMotta’s seventh wife, Denise Baker, told the TMZ.com website that the fighter died in a nursing home following complications from pneumonia.“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,” Baker was quoted by TMZ as saying.

Robert De Niro, who won an Oscar playing La Motta in the 1980 classic “Raging Bull,” led the tributes, saying in a statement: “Rest in peace, champ.”The De Niro-founded TriBeca Film Festival later posted a picture of the actor alongside LaMotta and the film’s director Martin Scorsese.

LaMotta’s long life belied a lengthy career in the ring which was notable for some of the most bruising battles the sport has ever seen.In a career spanning 1941 to 1954, LaMotta racked up a record of 83 victories, 30 of them knockouts, against 19 defeats, according to the boxing statistics website BoxRec.

On June 16, 1949 he scored a knockout win over French boxer Marcel Cerdan to capture the middleweight title. After two successful defenses, he lost the belt in 1952 in his sixth bout against Sugar Ray Robinson.