Robinson vs LaMotta VI, 1951: The St. Valentine's Day Massacre That Ended a Six-Fight Rivalry
Sugar Ray Robinson won the world middleweight title from Jake LaMotta in Chicago on 14 February 1951, when the referee stopped their sixth fight in the 13th round. LaMotta had handed Robinson his first professional defeat eight years earlier.
On 14 February 1951, in front of roughly 15,000 people at Chicago Stadium, Sugar Ray Robinson took the world middleweight title from Jake LaMotta when referee Frank Sikora stopped their sixth fight in the 13th round. Boxing remembers the night as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. It ended a rivalry that had run for more than eight years. Wikipedia's biography of Robinson calls it LaMotta's first legitimate knockout loss in 95 professional fights.
Two Opposite Fighters From New York
Robinson was born Walker Smith Jr. in Ailey, Georgia, in 1921 and turned professional in October 1940. By the time he first met LaMotta he was a fast, upright welterweight with combinations in both hands, and he looked close to unbeatable. LaMotta came out of the Bronx and was everything Robinson was not: a short, heavy middleweight who walked through punches, worked the body and seemed to take pain as a kind of fuel. Their scheduled weights rarely matched. According to the figures collected on Wikipedia's page about the rivalry, Robinson weighed 145 pounds for the first fight and LaMotta 158, and that gap would shape every meeting until 1951.
October 1942: The First Meeting at Madison Square Garden
The two first met on 2 October 1942 at Madison Square Garden. Robinson started as a heavy favourite and won a unanimous ten-round decision. Newspaper scorers who kept unofficial cards gave LaMotta very few rounds, and the result fitted the general view that the bigger man was simply too slow for Robinson. One account of the fight, on LaMotta's Wikipedia biography, says LaMotta put Robinson down in the opening round, but the rivalry page does not mention it. The detail should be treated with caution.
February 1943: The Night Robinson Lost for the First Time
The rematch on 5 February 1943 is the one that gave LaMotta his place in Robinson's story. Robinson came in with a perfect professional record. Wikipedia counts it at 40 wins without a loss, and the Associated Press obituary of LaMotta describes the bout as the 41st of Robinson's career. LaMotta, about 16 pounds heavier, pressed him for ten rounds. In the eighth he landed a right and a left and sent Robinson through the ropes, and the bell rang before the referee's count could finish. LaMotta won a unanimous decision, the first defeat of Robinson's professional career.
The sources do not agree on where this happened. Wikipedia places both February 1943 fights at Olympia Stadium in Detroit, while the AP obituary sets the upset in New York. Most detailed accounts of the series give Detroit.
Three Weeks Later: Robinson Restores Order
On 26 February 1943 the two fought again at the Olympia, and Robinson won a unanimous decision. He was dropped in the seventh round, and by the rivalry page's account he chose to stay down for most of the count while he recovered. LaMotta spent years arguing that the judges favoured Robinson because he was going into the army the next day. The cards were not close enough to settle that argument.
1945: Garden Decision and a Booed Verdict in Chicago
The war kept them apart for two years. On 23 February 1945 Robinson won a clear decision over ten rounds at Madison Square Garden. The fifth fight, on 26 September 1945 at Comiskey Park in Chicago, was the first scheduled for 12 rounds. Robinson took a split decision, and the crowd of 14,755 booed when it was announced. Robinson later called it the hardest of his fights with LaMotta. After that the paths split for more than five years. Robinson won the welterweight championship in 1946. LaMotta became middleweight champion on 16 June 1949 in Detroit, when Marcel Cerdan could not continue because of a shoulder injury. Sources number the round of Cerdan's retirement differently, either the ninth or the tenth.
The Build-Up to Chicago Stadium
By 1950 Robinson was finding it hard to make 147 pounds and moved up to middleweight, so a sixth fight with LaMotta was natural. This time LaMotta's belt was at stake. The bookmakers made Robinson about a 3 to 1 favourite. Writing for The Fight City, Michael Carbert notes that LaMotta had to lose four pounds the day before the fight to make 160, and argues that the weight cut drained the stamina he would need late in a 15-round fight. Boxing News puts Robinson's age at 30 and LaMotta's at 29, and the gate at $138,938.
Fifteen Rounds Scheduled, Thirteen Fought
The early rounds followed the old pattern. LaMotta walked forward and dug to the body, and Robinson boxed on the outside and scored with sharper punches. Boxing News reports that LaMotta kept pace in the first three rounds and fought back hard in the fourth. Carbert writes that LaMotta stunned Robinson and drew blood with a left hook in the sixth. Boxing News credits LaMotta with heavy body attacks in the seventh and eighth. Even so, Robinson was clearly ahead on points, and in the ninth he opened a cut by LaMotta's eye.
The fight turned in the 11th. LaMotta made one last all-out charge and hurt Robinson, by the rivalry page's account. Robinson covered up, answered with combinations of his own and took control. From there LaMotta was a stationary target. Robinson landed more or less at will in the 12th, and in the 13th he trapped the champion along the ropes. LaMotta's face was bleeding, his knees were giving way and he was no longer punching back, but he did not fall. Sikora stopped the fight at 2:04 of the round. An ESPN Deportes retrospective by Carlos Irusta lists LaMotta's injuries as cracked ribs, a broken nose and two eyes swollen shut. ESPN Deportes and Boxing News both give the attendance as 14,802. The Fight City rounds it to 15,000.
The fight was not close on paper either. Boxing News prints the cards at the stoppage as 63-57 from Sikora, 65-55 from judge Franklin McAdams and 70-50 from judge Ed Klein, all for Robinson.
"You Never Got Me Down": Fact and Film
The best-known line of the night may never have been spoken. Martin Scorsese's 1980 film Raging Bull, with Robert De Niro as LaMotta, has the beaten champion taunt Robinson that he never put him on the floor. Carbert flatly says the exchange did not happen as the film shows it. Irusta's ESPN Deportes piece, on the other hand, reports a coarser version of the same taunt from LaMotta on the ropes. What everyone agrees on is the fact behind the line. LaMotta stayed on his feet. In his whole career he was knocked down only once, by Danny Nardico in December 1952, according to his Wikipedia biography and the AP.
What the Massacre Left Behind
The win made Robinson world middleweight champion and finished the series at five wins to one. He lost the title to Randolph Turpin in London later in 1951 and won it back from him at the Polo Grounds in New York before the year was out. LaMotta fought on until 1954 and finished with a record of 83-19-4, with 30 knockouts, according to the AP. Late in life he still joked about how often he had fought Robinson. The AP quoted him: "I fought Sugar Ray Robinson so many times it's a wonder I don't have diabetes."
The nickname came from the date and the city. It recalls the 1929 gangland killings in Chicago, and AP stories call the fight the second St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Raging Bull won De Niro an Academy Award and brought the rivalry to a new audience decades later. The record underneath the film is clear. Robinson, who died in 1989, beat LaMotta five times. LaMotta, who died in September 2017 at 95, was the first man to beat Robinson as a professional.
Sources
- Sugar Ray Robinson vs. Jake LaMotta, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
- Jake LaMotta, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
- Sugar Ray Robinson, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
- Feb. 14, 1951: LaMotta vs Robinson VI, Michael Carbert, The Fight City, 14 February 2026
- San Valentín: Robinson vs. LaMotta en un baño de sangre, Carlos Irusta, ESPN Deportes, 14 February 2026
- On this day: Sugar Ray Robinson stops Jake LaMotta, Boxing News, 14 February 2024
- Jake LaMotta, boxer who inspired 'Raging Bull,' dies at 95, Associated Press (via FOX 5 New York), 20 September 2017
