In the hours before Ali fought Foreman in Zaire in 1974 - the Rumble in the Jungle - Dundee noticed that the ring ropes were sagging in the high humidity. He knocked Cooper out in the fifth round. Dundee was told that a substitute glove wasn't available, and the few seconds of delay helped Clay recover. Then he brought the badly damaged glove to the referee's attention. When Ali - or Clay, as was still known at the time - sought to regain his senses after being knocked down by Henry Cooper in the fourth round of their June 1963 bout, Dundee stuck his finger in a small slit that had opened in one of Ali's gloves, making the damage worse. It became their longtime base, Angelo as a trainer and Chris as a promoter. In the early 1950s, he teamed with his brother Chris to open the Fifth Street gym in Miami Beach, Florida. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1994.īorn Angelo Mirena, a Philadelphia native and the son of a railroad worker, he became Angelo Dundee after his brother, Joe, fought professionally under the name Johnny Dundee, in tribute to a former featherweight champion, and another brother, Chris, also adopted the Dundee name.Īfter working as a cornerman at military boxing tournaments in England while in the Army Air Forces during World War II, Dundee served an apprenticeship at Stillman's Gym near the old Madison Square Garden in New York, learning his craft from veteran trainers like Ray Arcel, Charley Goldman and Chickie Ferrara.
Dundee advised George Foreman when he regained the heavyweight title at age 45. Although best remembered for Ali and Leonard, he also trained the light-heavyweight champion Willie Pastrano, the heavyweight titleholder Jimmy Ellis and the welterweight champion Luis Rodriguez. As a cornerman, Angelo is the best in the world."ĭundee's first champion was Carmen Basilio, the welterweight and middleweight titleholder of the 1950s from upstate New York. "If he tells you something during a fight, you can believe it. "You come back to the corner and he'll say, 'The guy's open for a hook, or this or that,"' Ali told The New York Times in 1981. Muhammad Ali has his hands bandaged by his manager Angelo Dundee in 1963 Credit: Getty Images
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