“I wanted to make it on my own, but it took me a long time, and I had to throw a fight,” LaMotta told England’s Birmingham Post in 2006. Robinson then set his sights on the welterweight title and won it, but LaMotta, despite impressive performances against some of the best fighters in the business, from welterweights to light-heavyweights, couldn’t get a middleweight title shot.

With Robinson heading for World War II service in the Army, LaMotta turned to other opponents - he fought Fritzie Zivic four times in less than a year - but they got together again twice in 1945, with Robinson winning 10- and 12-round decisions. Full obituary (Tina Fineberg / Associated Press) His informed yet accessible prose led many laymen to read his books as their introduction to religions of the East and West. It was reissued as “The World’s Religions” in 1991 and has sold about 2 million copies. A scholar of world religions, Smith is best known for his work “The Religions of Man,” first published in 1958.

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