JAKE LAMOTTA T.K.O.’s MARCEL CERDAN AT DETROIT

Grey River Argus, 18 June 1949, Page 6

JAKE LAMOTTA T.K.O.’s MARCEL CERDAN AT DETROIT

For Middleweight World Championship

(Rec. 9.55). NEW YORK, June 16. A fight for the middle-weight boxing championship of the world took place to-night at Detroit, in Michigan, between Jake Lamotta, of New York, and Marcel Cerdan, of French Morocco. Cerdan was the holder of the championship.

Lamotta gained the championship by knocking out Cerdan in the tenth round.

The bout was scheduled for fifteen rounds. The knockout was a technical one. Lamotta weighed eleven stone four and a-quarter pounds, and Cerdan eleven stone five and a-quarter pounds. Cerdan was not able to answer the bell for the tenth round. This was because of a pain in his left shoulder. He claimed that his shoulder was injured when Lpmotta half-knocked and half-threw him to the canvas in the first round.

There was a crowd of fifteen thousand. They saw Lamotta batter Cerdan into nearly complete submission in the seventh, the eighth, and the ninth rounds, and Cerdan wobbled as he went to his corner. He lay back on his stool and on the corner ropes, as though in distress. There was no actual knock-down in the whole bout. In the first round, however, while Cerdan was absorbing punishment, Lamotta half-threw him to the canvas. But Cerdan recovered quickly. Lamotta staggered Cerdan on several other occasions during furious fighting, but Cerdan rocked Lamotta back on his heels several times in the second round and the fifth round. The boxers slugged it out, toe to toe, on fairly even terms, in the third and sixth rounds. Until the last minute of the sixth round, it seemed certain that Cerdan had an even chance of retaining his title, for he had rallied superbly from the battering he had received in the first round. But, in the last minute of the sixth, Lamotta came back, and he gave Cerdan a terrific battering on the body and on the head. From this Cerdan never seemed to recover.

Cerdan had been injured in his left shoulder. Because of this injury he relied mainly on short right hooks. But Lamotta used both his hands freely and effectively. He peppered Cerdan with left jabs in nearly every round.

Cerdan used a shell defence of his gloves and forearms before his face, but he seemed not to be able to get away from the jabs which Lamotta kept needling in between his gloves into his reddened face. Cerdan was not able to come up after the ninth round, and under the Michigan rules, which prevail at Detroit, this was a tenth round knockout.

This was the first time in his career that Marcel Cerdan had failed to last the scheduled distance of a contest. He won the middle-weight title from Tony Zale, last September. Lamotta has been seeking a title fight for many years. Lamotta is under contract to give Cerdan a return fight for the title before October 1.