Angelo Dundee shaped Muhammad Ali
BY NANCY STETSON nstetson@florida-weekly.com

PHOTOS FROM MY VIEW FROM THE CORNER Above: Angelo Dundee at Muhummad Ali's side in an early fight. Left: Dundee was enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1994.

Angelo Dundee knows boxing.

He's been in the business for almost 60 years.

He also knows boxers; he was the trainer for Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard and George Foreman as well as champion boxers Willie Pastrano and Carmen Basilio. He trained 15 world champions, and in 1994 was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Dundee continues to train boxers and also delivers boxing commentary for fights on TV.

It was Dundee who taught Will Smith how to box like the Champ for the biopic "Ali" and he also served as boxing consultant for the movie "The Cinderella Man," about boxer James J. Braddock. Dundee also had a part in the movie as Russell Crowe's cut man. At times, he'd get so excited watching Crowe fight that he'd yell out instructions, forgetting they were filming a pre-rehearsed scene. (After winning a big fight, Crowe, as Braddock, spontaneously leaned over and kissed Dundee's bald head.)

As a young man starting out, Dundee hung out at Jack Dempsey's restaurant, Toot Shor's, the Garden Cafeteria, Stillman's Gym and the Neutral Corner, all in New York City, listening to trainers talk boxing.

"It matched anything the fabled Algonquin Round Table had to offer," he writes. "...I was privy to some of the greatest stories of all time, told by some of boxing's greatest storytellers. As they sat at The Neutral sipping their ten-cent beers and chewing on their ten-day-old cigars or at the Garden Cafeteria nursing their coffees, they talked and talked and talked, holding nothing back, their experiences, their advice, and their tall tales all told in a gleeful mangling of the English language with tortured syntax and marvelously invented words..."

Now, Dundee is one of those storytellers with a lifetime of boxing matches, adventures and experiences to share. As a trainer, a corner man, he had one of the best views of the last 60 years of boxing.

He tells them all in a Runyon-esque voice in his new memoir, "My View From the Corner: A Life in Boxing," written with boxing writer/ESPN sports analyst Bert Randolph Sugar (a regular guest on Miller & Moulton on Sportsradio ESPN 770). Muhammad Ali provides the foreword.

COURTESY PHOTO Angelo Dundee, left, with well-known boxing writer and ESPN analyst Bert Sugar. Dundee and Sugar collaborated on the book "My View From the Corner: A Life in Boxing."

For example, Dundee writes about a fighter he trained who "had three speeds: slow, stop, and wait-a-minute." He writes about a young fighter who "was always in search of two-legged wildlife, his out-ofthe ring nocturnal antics including things you wouldn't find on French postcards. Once, during a sit-down interview with British sports writer Dick Curry, Willie went into such graphic detail recounting his various sexcapades that a shocked Curry had to excuse himself to, as they say over there, go out to regurgitate."

Dundee will speak and sign copies of his book Saturday, March 15 at the Lee County Reading Festival held in downtown Fort Myers at the Harborside Event Center and Centennial Park. He'll speak in room C1 at Harborside at 12:15 p.m.

Here are some of his comments and remembrances, which he delivered in his no-nonsense South Philly accent, in a recent phone interview:

On "My View From the Corner":

You'll get a kick out of it, because it's '48 'til now.

They're true, the stories. There's no fabrication in any of it. Because I lived it, I was around it, and the people I'm explaining about were friends of mine.

Me and Bert Sugar did ESPN classics. And Bert says, "Ange, you got a pretty good story to tell." I said, I don't know, I told my story before, it was a love story, and it didn't go too far. I think it was double-printed in England, because I've been in England many many times with fighters.

For my first book, I didn't have a guy who writes like Bert Sugar. And I didn't have a guy who mingles like Bert Sugar. So it's two guys mingling and two guys hustling, and enjoying doing it.

We talked. I tell you, he got me something where I can talk into a machine, but it's not the same. You see, when you're doing it one-on-one, then you get a better response out of each other. Talking to a dictating machine doesn't do it.

I've been very fortunate in my career as a fight guy, I got interviewed by a lot of nice people, geniuses in their own way. Howard Cosell, the guys, Al Buck, Mr. Bromberg. These guys would pry me with questions, and I got pretty good where I could bounce back and give them stuff they were trying to get out of me. I had to blend with those guys.

All of a sudden I'm with the book guys. Isn't that wonderful? All of a sudden I've got a new bunch of friends. I love it. I can blend with that scene. I think a fight guy has the capability of blending in with all those things.

On the varied role of a trainer:

You gotta see what the guy has. Whatever he's got natural, you leave it alone. But you teach him things to do that benefit him. Like I tell you, it's different approaches. Some guys you can badger, some guys you gotta back off, some guys, you can't make them think that they gotta do it, they gotta do it. They gotta want to do it. There's just something - it's not a God-given thing- it's something you pick up, intelligence, from working with different people.

Muhammad thought he invented everything. He was the superstar. You don't try to contain jet propulsion. If you try to contain it, it falls flat. Let him take his head, and you try to direct it. It's like a movie director, producer, same thing. We all got to have these little traits to help the individual, the guy, the fighter.

You gotta remember, you're not the star, the fighter's the star. You know, for four years, people thought I was a mute. I never got a word in, because I didn't want to put a word in. Muhammad used to leave all you writers limp. One time one guy says to me, "Ange, we want to talk to you." I said, "Well thank God!"

I have fun. This is another key. You gotta have fun at what you do. You can't make it a crisis, you can't make it, "Oh my God, we gotta do this!" You can't do that.

Trainers, between you and I, have a camaraderie. People think we're working against each other, but we have a relationship where we like each other. We have no problems. Nobody resents anybody else for having a fight.

I watch all the fights. I tell you, it's ridiculous. I was 19 years with Muhammad. I mean today, they change trainers like they put on a new pair of shorts. I don't know why they do that, it doesn't ring a bell with me, because you're better off going with what you've got. It got you there, so you might as well stay with it. But you know, you can't read a fighter's mind, they're intricate.

I watch all fights because I have to be prepared if someone asks me about an individual. I got to be able to speak intelligently and give my rendition of what I think about the fighter.

On fighters and winning and losing:

You don't meet a more intricate personality than a fighter. They're intricate. And that's why they're so special. Everybody can't be a fighter.

The desire to be best at what you do makes the best fighters. In other words, you've got to be the best of what you do to reach the ultimate, become a champion. You just can't be one of a bunch, you've got to be a separatist. You can't mingle, you can't keep late hours, you can't walk down the street with a girl because then you're a womanizer, you can't go into a bar - "You're a drunk."

What you're selling is an image. You're selling a good kid. That's why [Oscar] De La Hoya glowed. That's why [Sugar] Ray

Leonard captured the people after Muhammad,

because he's got charisma. And he had talent. Don't get me wrong, you gotta have talent. But charisma comes in handy. But if you don't have talent, charisma ain't gonna help you.

If you hear me talk to a young kid coming out of the amateurs, you'd think I'm trying to discourage him. It's a tough profession. You don't make money early on, you've got to take a lot of abuse. You're going to lose one now and then. You have to learn how to handle adversity. You've got to learn, don't let it get you down. My theory is, if you learn something from a loss, you're a winner.

It's true. Many a time I went into a dressing room where I watched the fight and seen a kid get licked. And I went in and said, "Look, you'll be better for this. Don't let it bother you. Tomorrow is another day."

[From a loss], you also learn what not to do the next time. You're a better human being for it.

The other tough thing is this: when you're on top, it's great. When you slide down below, there's no in-between. It's great, or nothing. And don't you feel wonderful when you walk down the street and they say, "Who's that guy? Probably a former world champion."

It's a profession of extremes. There's no sliding gently. The light gets turned off.

On what he looks for in a fighter:

I look where the guy don't have to be persuaded to go to the gym every day. Now a great fighter like Muhammad Ali was the first fighter in the gym and the last guy to leave. The gymnasium was his stage. The gymnasium was where he prepared. He loved it, he had a great time.

It's simple basics, really. I look at a kid; if I got a tall kid, I'll make him taller. If I got a short kid, I'll make him shorter. If you're tall, you got to reach for a guy, if they're short, the guy's gonna be banging down on you, so you give him a little less to bang down on, you slide on him. Rocky Marciano was the greatest, because he was not a tall guy. But Charley Goldman was a genius, he trained him. He was one of my teachers. And he made him short, slick, smart. And he made him the world champion, undefeated world champion of the world.

On Muhammad Ali:

He was the Pied Piper. That's what I used to call him. He used to call people wherever he went.

I became his fistic voice right now, because he can't talk. His personal voice is his wife, Lonnie, who's a friend of mine. Whenever they want to talk boxing with Muhammad, they call me. I'm grateful.

The Parkinson's had taken its toll on the kid. I thought he would lick it, I swear, if anybody could lick it, he would. But he's not, evidently. It's rough.

He and his brother came up to talk to me in a hotel room when he was a kid. He was curious about what fighters do. He called from the lobby: "My name is Cassius Marcellus Clay. I'm the Golden Gloves champion, and I won the Atlanta Golden Gloves. And I want to talk to you." He knew me, because I was on TV with CBS a lot with all of my fighters. And he was curious about how I worked with fighters. And Willie Pastrano was with me. And the friendship became great between him and Willie; he used to call Willie "Sweet Willie."

We're friends. We respect each other. We got along famously. We never had a cross word. To this day, he calls my wife Mrs. Dundee. He's just a good kid, and he's been a good kid, and he's a good kid right now.

I made that marriage [between him and Howard Cosell] because I recognized Cosell's greatness. I did an interview with him one time, a two-minute bit when he was with ABC television. And I was in NY with a fighter, and I went up to try to hustle the fight, and I watched [Cosell] do 10 ball games. He knew the hitters, and he never used a script and never used a monitor. And we became dear friends.

On the psychology of fighting:

Psychology is knowing your subject, knowing how far you can go. I did a fight one time, and I didn't know the mic was on me, and I cussed out this fighter, because he could've become a world champion. I told him to do something, and he came back and he reverted. So I cussed him out. And when I came home, my kids told me, "Dad, you shouldn't cuss like that!" You can't do that with everybody.

You gotta know the individual. I tell the story about Johnny Holman, a man who was supposed to be retired. All this guy wanted was a house with shutters with an air conditioner for his wife. And he's fighting lo and behold the former champion of the world, Ezzard Charles. And he was getting the heck kicked out of him; looked like he was going to jump out of the ring. So what happened, I told him, "Hey man, they're takin' your house away from you! What are you doing?" I got him so infuriated, he knocked out Ezzard Charles. And it's in the record books. It's a true story. You know what it is hon, you can repeat truth, you can't repeat baloney.

Each and every fighter is a separate individual.

You gotta be a blender, you can't be the same with every fighter. I've never met the same fighter twice. They're all different. Thank God for the difference. Then Angelo Dundee comes in and tries to blend with it.

On the movie "Cinderella Man":

"Cinderella Man" is probably going to be the greatest movie of all time. You know, [director] Ron Howard made me an actor. I'm in the movie. I was the fistic consultant. That was one month in Australia, and three months in Toronto. And at the end of the movie, Braddock (Russell Crowe) kissed me on top of the head, my little bald head, and made me feel like a million bucks, and it wasn't in the script. And Russell Crowe's a sweetheart. A great actor, a great guy.

I'm used to movie camera, I've been educated on what to do, what not to do, don't gape at the camera, look at the guy. I was educated doing my interviews as a fight guy. But Russell Crowe's a genius, he knows where the camera is. In one scene, where I'm taking care of a cut, and I got the silver dollar I'm pressing on it, and I slip a little bit. So I said, "Geez, I'm sorry." And he said, "Don't worry about it Ange, the camera's on the left side."

But I had a lot of fun.

I think movies like "Cinderella Man" and "Ali" are great, because the people talk boxing. The other thing of interest to me, I thought boxing drew actors because of the star quality. It's not true. They work as hard as fighters work, they get up at 5 in the morning and are up to 2, 3 the next day. They're tough, and they appreciate the fighters' tough workouts. It's becoming very popular right now, where they go to gyms and train like fighters. They don't fight like fighters, but they train like them. Boxers have their own technique of working their fighters, and it's a different technique than basketball, football, baseball. Everybody has their own technique. We got ours, and it's a great conditioning tool. That's why people go to gyms now taking boxercise. People are drawn to it because of their work ethics, especially actors. They work hard. They work hard on the set.

On the future of boxing:

I got a got a couple: Jimmy Lange, in Fairfax, Virginia, and I got a kid from Nassau called Jermaine Mackey. And he's been fighting since he's 10 years old. Jimmy Lange draws 4 or 5,000 people every time he fights. That's why I'm interested. We need kids like Jimmy Lange in every town in the United States, and boxing will be top gun again. We won't be the etc., we'll be the headline. I resent being the etc. Times change. And different, the youngsters come of age, and they root for different things, and I respect that. I try to give the public what they want. Times change. You gotta go with the times today. You can't go "in my day." Forget your day. Today is today, you gotta stick with it.

On the allure of boxing:

The allure of boxing is the challenge, one-on-one. You got to see if you're better than the other individual in the ring. There's nobody helping you, when you come back to the corner. You get a little advice, but nobody can help you physically. You're the guy in the middle of the ring. There's no gate in the ring. You can't jump out. You're there. And it's one-onone.

if you go

>> What: Lee County Reading Festival

>> When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 15

>> Where: Harborside Event Center and Centennial Park, downtown Fort Myers

>> Cost: Free

>> Information: Call 337-READ or go to www.lee-county.com/library

>> Angelo Dundee speaks at 12:15 p.m. in Room C1 at the Harborside Event Center