Jake LaMotta

"Here, you'll like this," says George Randazzo, a 38-year-old Italian-American with fire in his eyes. Randazzo walks into a storage room and begins moving cardboard boxes around. "Now where is it?" he mutters,...

The violence in Raging Bull is ghastly and overdone. A nose crunches, broken for us to hear close up; copious amounts of blood gush out of orifices and gashes, drenching the ringside swells. To what purpose? There...

•Don Rickles, upon being introduced to Nevada Attorney General Brian McKay at the Hagler-Hearns fight in Las Vegas: "If you'd put more criminals in jail, you could've had a seat closer to ringside."

•Abe Lemons, Oklahoma City basketball coach, on how he came within two strokes of winning a car at a golf tournament: "It was a hole-in-one contest and I had a three."

When it came to putting boxing on film, Thomas Edison had the right idea. Ninety-six years ago the inventor set up his kinetoscope in a laboratory in West Orange, N.J., and cranked away as world heavyweight champion...