I've done a lot of bad things in my life Joey, maybe now I'ts coming back to me

Rating: 9/10 (12 November 2005)

(There Are Spoilers) Unlike most professional prize-fighters who keep their aggressions inside of the boxing-ring and outside of it would rather walk away from a fight then participate or provoke one boxer, and later Middleweight Champion,Jake La Matta, Robert Di Niro, was the exact opposite.
Brutal rude petty and jealous and combative of anyone who as much as looked at his pretty wife Vickie, Cathy Moriarty, La Matta did more fighting outside the ring then in it. Fighting his way up the ranks to get a shot at the title 20 year-old La Matta is defeated for the first time in his career on September 24, 1941 in Cleveland after he knocked his opponent Jimmy Reeves, Flyod Anderson, out cold. Reeves was saved from being counted out by the bell and was declared the winner which started a full-scale riot in the Cleveland arena.
Quickly recovering from his loss La Matta went on to defeat the undefeated Sugar Ray Robinson (Johnny Barnes), who bet La Matta twice before,on February 26, 1943 in a 10 round decision in Detroit, Robinson's home town. Assured that he'd get a shot at the Middleweight Title LaMatta had to wait some six years, and throw a fight to journeyman boxer Billy Fox(Eddie Mustafa Muhammad) in New York on November 11, 1947,to get it.
The movie "Raging Bull" concentrates more on Jake LaMatta's personal then professional boxing life and we see just what kind of a Neanderthal and brute he was to the people he came in contact with especially his wife Vickie and younger brother Joey, Joe Pesci.Suffering from an inferior complex and afraid that Vickie would leave him for another man, like he left his first wife for Vickie,La Matta constantly beat and berated Vickie to the point of not just slapping her around but catching Vickie flush right in the face with one of his punches that knocked her out.
Even Joey wasn't speared from Jake's brutality and suspicions of fooling around with Vickie when he savagely attacked and bet him, right in front of Joey's wife and children. This lead Joey to never talk to Jake again until almost ten years later. La Matta finally got a shot at the title on June 16, 1949 in Detroit and defeated the Middleweight Champ Frenchman Marcel Cerdan, Louis Raftis, when he couldn't answer the bell for the 10th round.
Defending his hard won title a year later against fellow Frenchman Laurent Dauthuille (Johnny Turner), Cerdan died in a plane crash before his re-match with La Matta,on September 13, 1950 in NYC Jake was about to lose the fight on points. It's then that he exploded with a fury of punches in the 15th round and knocked out Dauthuille with only 13 seconds left in the fight.
For all intents and purposes Jake La Matta's boxing career ended, he official retired in 1954, on February 14, 1951, known in the boxing world as the St. Valentine Day massacre. It's then when he fought and lost his Middleweight crown to his arch-rival Sugar Ray Robinson in a brutal 13 round battle. La Matta bloodied and beaten was still standing on his feet when the fight was stopped by the ring referee.
No longer able to box professionally La Matta opened up a nightclub, the Jake La Matta, in Miami Florida but trouble still followed him. La Matta was busted on a vice rap, that landed him in the Dade County Jail. This happened when he allowed a 14 year-old girl Mary Albee, who told LaMatta that she was 21, drink at his club and then introduced her to a number of his friends.
The movie "Raging Bull" ends in NYC in 1964 with a pudgy and punch-drunk Jake La Matta, alone with everyone that he knew in his hay-day as a boxing champ deserting him, rehearsing his nightclub act which is nothing more then a parody of his life. An amazing Acadamy Award performance by Robert Di Niro as the edgy and uncontrollable Jake La Matta who had to gain some 50 pounds, going from a fighting trim of 165 to over 200 lbs, to make the role of Jake La Matta believable.
The film "Raging Bull" also made a star out of the 36 year-old Joe Pesci who was about to call it quits on his acting career until Robert Di Niro himself demanded that he play his tragic, and somewhat unusable, brother Joey.