NEW YORK – Philadelphia native Angelo Dundee who trained Muhammed Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard during their glory boxing days died Wednesday in Tampa, Florida, aged 90. Born Angelo Mirena he was the son of a railroad worker and spent more than 60 years in professional boxing as one the world’s most renowned cornermen.
His death was announced by his son Jimmy, reports the Associated Press. The first champion Dundee trained was Carmen Basilio, a middlewight titleholder who fought in the 1950s but he’s best remembered for training Ali and Leonard. He became Ali’s trainer in December 1960 and guided him to the heavyweight title in 1964 with a win over Sonny Liston.
“Training Cassius was not quite the same as training another fighter,” Dundee recalled in his memoir, My View From the Corner. ”Some guys take direction and some don’t, and this kid had to be handled with kid gloves. So every now and then I’d subtly suggest some move or other to him, couching it as if it were something he was already doing. I’d say something like: ‘You’re getting that jab down real good. You’re bending your knees now and you’re putting a lot of snap into it.’ Now, he had never thrown a jab, but it was a way of letting him think it was his idea, his innovation.”
In 1977 Dundee became Leonard’s manager and cornerman in 1977 and taught him how to snap his left jab “rather than paw with it,” reports The Sydney Morning Herald “and guided him to the welterweight championship with a knockout of Wilfred Benitez in 1979.”
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