The power and grace of a boxing champ; with lightening speed and an impressive style, Sugar Ray Robinson was considered to be the best ever to step into the ring.

In the four years it took me to complete Pound for Pound: A Biography of Sugar Ray Robinson (Amistad, February 2005, $24.95, ISBN 0-060-18876-6), nothing was as fascinating as researching Sugar's bouts with Jake LaMotta. The excerpt below is from the chapter "St. Valentine's Day Massacre," and it offers a glimpse of the brutal encounters between a skillful boxer and a relentless brawler.

CHAPTER 14: THE ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE

Another person licking his chops for Sugar to return was Jake LaMotta. Now that the way was cleared for them to face each other for the sixth time, the Bull was practically pawing the turf, eager to charge across the ring and punish the man who had beaten him four out of five times....

Reaching the top of his craft had not been easy, and Sugar had used all sorts of tactics and strategies to keep his opponents off balance. Sometimes he psyched them out--as he may have with LaMotta at a luncheon a few days before their fight. Sitting near the Bull, Sugar asked the waiter if he could have a large glass of beef blood. Both the waiter and LaMotta were puzzled by the request. Sugar stressed his order, clarifying that he did not want gravy, but actual beef blood, extracted "before the meat is cooked," he said. The waiter obeyed and returned with a glassful of blood. Sugar downed it in one long gulp. Wiping his mouth, he explained to a bug-eyed LaMotta that he had been drinking it for years on the advice of Chappie Blackburn, Louis's trainer. It was the equivalent of a stare-down at the weigh-in. He told the Bull that it was his secret weapon and gave him the strength to overcome bigger and stronger opponents. LaMotta told Sugar that he was out of his mind. Sugar would have likewise questioned LaMotta's sanity when he drank two or three shots of brandy before their fight. LaMotta said he did this to give him a sense of false courage to hide his real fear. He knew he wasn't in good enough shape to fight Sugar. One fighter was half drunk on brandy and the other was juiced up on beef blood. If the bettors had known, there would be no guessing where their money would have gone.

At the sound of the bell, the din in Chicago Stadium increased, and the Bull, as was his style, leaped from his stool and rushed headlong across the ring, his gloves locked to his side like padded horns. Sugar was faster than ever in sidestepping the charges, delivering stinging jabs and swift counter-punches to the Bull's awkward flails. And this would be the pattern for the first several rounds, with Sugar slicing and dicing LaMotta with such rapid, laserlike precision that the Bull became more frustrated with each blow.

There was very little toe-to-toe punching during the first seven rounds, though there was plenty of superb boxing by Sugar "the matador" and headfirst assaults by the Bull. However, over the next three rounds Sugar battered LaMotta unmercifully. But the Bull was as stubborn as ever, refusing to fall. When it was over, LaMotta lay sprawled across the top ropes, his face bloodier than a slab of beef. He had only the strength to mutter, "You couldn't put me down, you black bastard. You can't put me on the deck."

These were the words Sugar heard, but in his autobiography La Motta remembered the slaughter this way: "... Robinson had me but I wouldn't give the son of a bitch the satisfaction of knocking me down, so I told the referee I'd murder him if he tried to stop the fight. I got my arm wedged around one of the ring ropes and stayed there, defying Robinson to knock me down. He couldn't, but I got about as bad a beating as I've ever had."

The referee, Frankie Sikorfa, stepped in and halted the match in the thirteenth round. Under Illinois regulations, Sugar was awarded a technical knockout, and indeed, the Bull was virtually out on his feet. Because of the beating LaMotta took on this day, February 14, 1951, the fight was called "the St. Valentine's Day Massacre" recalling the mob-related execution on the same day in 1929 in the Windy City. In LaMotta's own words: "Well, Robinson didn't have a machine gun and there was only one victim, but it was still a massacre.... If the fight had gone another twenty seconds, Sugar would have collapsed from hitting me so much...."

Boxing authority Dr. Ferdie Pacheco ranked the thirteenth round of this fight as one of the greatest rounds in fight history.

Herb Boyd is a contributing editor to BIBR. His book We Shall Overcome: A Living History of the Civil Rights Struggle Told in Words, Pictures and Voices of the Participants (SourceBooks, Inc.) was published this past fall.