It was business as usual.”īusiness as usual or not, fans understood Olympia wasn’t hosting a garden-variety Friday night fight card. Robinson had defeated LaMotta in a unanimous decision at Madison Square Garden the previous October. These were not events with months to lead up to in the public mind. “You know: You win this decision this time and I'll fight you back next month. “A loss was not as devastating as it is today,” explains Goldman.

Contenders were known by name, even people who weren’t sports-oriented would know a lot of contenders by name.”Īnd, while today's marquee fights are as much spectacle as sport, with months of hype and preparation, it was normal for even blue-chip boxers to fight two or three times in a month back then. “It was a mainstream, major league sport. “Boxing was much bigger than we have it today,” says former Ring Magazine editor Herb Goldman. Fights were mainstream events on par with professional baseball or college football games. Out of those fights, the birth of two legends: Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta.”īoxing in the 1940s wasn’t the niche sport it is today. “It would never happen today,” says Washington Post reporter Wil Haygood, author of “ Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson.” It seems unbelievable that two of boxing greatest legends would, in the prime of their careers, square off twice in the same month and in the same venue, but that's exactly what took place in Detroit in 1943. LaMotta was also a great champion in his own right and became a cultural icon thanks to Martin Scorsese's classic film “Raging Bull.” Robinson is still considered the all-time greatest pound-for-pound fighter by virtually every boxing expert. He isn't telling tales when he praises his rival. “He was undefeated in his first 100 fights. “There's no question that was the greatest fighter who ever lived,” LaMotta, age 90, triumphantly recalled while speaking to Deadline Detroit from his Florida home. Sugar Ray would get revenge three weeks later in yet another fight at Olympia.

Seventy years ago today, on February 5, 1943, boxing history was made at Detroit's Olympia Stadium as Jake LaMotta handed Detroit-native Sugar Ray Robinson his first defeat.

Ray lamotta