Boxing · 1951 · Chicago, USA
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre
In the sixth and final chapter of one of boxing's most punishing rivalries, Sugar Ray Robinson batters Jake LaMotta until the referee has to step in.
Robinson def. LaMotta, TKO round 13
Result
Robinson 5-1
Head-to-head series
14 February 1951
Date
Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta fought each other six times between 1942 and 1951, a rivalry physical enough that LaMotta had handed Robinson the only defeat of his first 40-odd professional fights. The sixth and final meeting, for LaMotta's middleweight title, took place at Chicago Stadium on 14 February 1951, Valentine's Day.
Robinson took control early and kept it, opening cuts and landing combinations round after round, while LaMotta, who would not go down for anyone, absorbed an increasingly one-sided beating rather than yield. By the thirteenth he was defenceless against the ropes and still upright, and the referee stopped the fight to spare him the rest.
The date and the city gave it a lasting nickname, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, borrowed grimly from the Chicago gangland shooting of decades earlier. Robinson won the series 5-1.
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