My View from the Corner Read online

  My View From The Corner

  A LIFE IN BOXING

  ANGELO DUNDEE

  with

  BERT RANDOLPH SUGAR

  Copyright © 2008 by Angelo Dundee and Bert Randolph Sugar. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  DOI: 10.1036/007147739X

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  To Helen Dundee:

  You are a rare and wonderful woman. Thank you for being everything

  that a wife and mother should be. You are my last fighter

  and the greatest fighter I ever had.

  —Angelo

  Contents

  Foreword by Muhammad Ali

  ONE Fifty-Plus Years in the Fight Game: How Did I Get Here?

  TWO My Apprenticeship with Brother Chris

  THREE Miami Beach and My First Champion

  FOUR The "Greatest" Hook-Up of My Life

  FIVE Young Cassius Punches His Ticket to the Top

  SIX Baiting and Beating "The Bear"

  SEVEN Boxing Becomes Cassius Clay Who Becomes Muhammad Ali

  EIGHT Ali's Exile—and Things to Do in the Meantime, in Between Time

  NINE "The Fight": March 8, 1971

  TEN The Path from "People's Champion" to World Champion (Again)

  ELEVEN "The Rumble in the Jungle": October 30, 1974

  TWELVE "The Thrilla in Manila" and Joe Frazier

  THIRTEEN Boxing's "Greatest" Leaves the Stage

  FOURTEEN Filling Ali's Size-50 Shoes with Sugar Ray Leonard

  FIFTEEN Duran: "No Mas?" No Way, No Say

  SIXTEEN Hearns, Retirement—and a "Marvelous" Comeback

  SEVENTEEN The Second Coming of George Foreman

  EIGHTEEN That Last Chapter: Memories Are Made of This

  Index

  Foreword Muhammad Ali

  Copyright © 2008 by Angelo Dundee and Bert Randolph Sugar Click here for terms of use.

  I first heard of Angelo in 1957. I was watching him on Friday Night Fights; he was working in the corner with Willie Pastrano, Luis Rodri-Rodriguez, and others. I said to myself, "One day I'm gonna meet that man." I liked his style.

  After winning the Olympics in Rome, I turned professional. I eventually went to Florida to meet that man named Angelo Dundee. Before that I went to train with Archie Moore, and he was so strict. He told me that to be in his camp, I had to wash dishes, keep the place clean, and do other work. I didn't like that type of camp.

  So, I went to see Angelo. He wasn't bossy. He didn't tell me what to do. He let me set my own pace. I turned pro under him but soon gained a controversial image. In Miami, I joined Islam, and the news got out that I was a Muslim.

  In those days, Elijah Muhammad told us that the white man was the Devil, and I believed him. It made me very controversial. Angelo Dundee paid no attention to all that talk, all that bad publicity. He never said I was wrong, he never asked why I joined the Muslims, he never said anything about it.

  That is one reason I stayed with him. Of course, he was a great trainer, too! But through all those days of controversy, and the many that followed, Angelo never got involved. He let me be exactly who I wanted to be, and he was loyal. That is the reason I love Angelo.

  ONE

  Fifty-Plus Years in the Fight Game: How Did I Get Here?

  Copyright © 2008 by Angelo Dundee and Bert Randolph Sugar Click here for terms of use.

  Here I am after more than fifty years in boxing—almost sixty, but who's counting?—and with all those wonderful moments pressed somewhere in the pages of my memory, I don't know where to start. Finally, after looking at it every which way, I decided to start with a tale of two of the most unforgettable characters I've ever met: Muhammad Ali and Willie Pastrano. But it's not the kind of story you'd expect.

  The story goes back to 1952, when I took two fighters to New Orleans to appear on a local show. As luck would have it, the two fought on the same card as two youngsters trained and managed by Whitey Esenault, a New Orleans legend known as "Mr. Whitey." After the fights were over, Esenault approached me and asked if I'd be interested in working with his two kids. "Ange," Esenault said, "I got these two kids. They're both under-age and can only fight six-rounders here, but they're something special. If I sent them to you, would you work with them?" Would I? Having seen the two, both of whom had won their fights and showed promise, I hastily accepted Esenault's generous offer.

  The two boys, and I do mean boys, were Ralph Dupas and Willie Pastrano, two sixteen-year-old kids who had grown up a couple of houses from each other in the French Quarter, Ralph the oldest of the two by six weeks. Their entry into boxing was as dissimilar as their backgrounds similar, Ralph having been a tough, h
ard-nosed street brawler, while Willie, in his own words, having been a five-foot, two hundred–pound butterball who was "a fat little coward who ran from even the slightest suggestion of a fight." Ralph, after watching Willie in action, or inaction, took his friend, then called "Fat Meat," to Esenault's gym over at the St. Mary's Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) to learn how to defend himself—and, not incidentally, to lose weight. The lessons took, and Willie soon followed his neighbor's lead into boxing.

  The two arrived at the 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach soon afterward, looking weary and tired and carrying all their gear in paper bags and their records in newspaper clippings. Dupas, having doctored his birth certificate so that he was able to turn pro at the age of fourteen, had a gaudy 24–2–3 record; Willie, entering the pro ranks later, had a more modest one of 5–0–l.

  Now, training fighters is like trying to catch fish. It's not the strength but the technique; you've got to play the fish nice and easy and go with what's there. And what was there in these two kids was that "something special" Whitey had first seen.

  Over the next few weeks I added to their meager gear, giving them headguards, new trunks, and new jockstraps. And these two works in progress repaid me in kind, putting in the time and effort as they trained under my guidance. That is, Ralph did, taking to training. Willie took to something less. See, each fighter is different; they're all individuals. And if you listened to Willie's quote book you could tell he was an individual—one not given to training. Every day, as he climbed the steps to the gym, he would mutter, "I'm on my way to hell." Willie also wanted to invent a roadwork pill. According to Willie, "You get up in the morning, take the pill, have breakfast, then a deep breath, and look around, and you've done five miles on the road." He even said his ambition was to make enough money so he could "dynamite the gym."

  Soon the two began appearing on my brother Chris's Tuesday night cards at the Miami Beach Auditorium and were adopted as hometown heroes. Here's Chris's genius in developing the two: he changed the amount of time of the rounds in their fights from three to two minutes so the two could fight eight two-minute rounds instead of the six three-minute rounds they had previously been limited to. Now, fighting eight-round bouts, they both kept busy. Ralph, fighting as a lightweight, had fifteen fights in 1952 and twelve more in '53, both in Miami Beach and New Orleans; he won twenty-four times and rose as high as number nine in The Ring ratings. Willie, fighting as a welter, won seventeen in '52 and '53 and also rose in the ratings.

  Willie was a particularly clever fighter who had become known as "Will o' the Wisp." He also was becoming known for something else. For Willie worked his hands as though he was outlining the form of a beautiful woman—which was only fair because that seemed to be all that was on Willie's mind.

  Willie's motto was "Show me a guy who doesn't have sex with his girl at least four times a week, and I'll show you a girl that can be had." And Willie was always in search of girls who could. Not only that, he didn't care who knew it, believing it paid to advertise. One time columnist Jimmy Cannon said to him, "Willie, you must be a good dancer the way you move around the ring," following with the question, "What's your favorite dance?" Willie came back, "the horizontal tango," and wouldn't you know it, Willie's quote appeared in the paper the next morning.

  A member of the you-can't-take-it-with-you-so-why-not-wear-it-out-while-you're-here school of thought, Willie was always out in search of two-legged wildlife, his out-of-the-ring nocturnal antics including things you wouldn't find on French postcards. Once, during a sit-down interview with British sportswriter 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.

  The combination of sex and fighting has long been one of boxing's greatest controversies, old-timers believing it to be a no-no that would sap a fighter's strength, especially before a fight. Veteran trainer Freddie Brown once told me that his fighter, Tony Janiro, was a real chick magnet: "Coulda been a champion, but sex was his problem. That's what ruined him. For the first four, five rounds, no trouble ... but the next four, five ... no strength." And former lightweight champion Ike Williams was quoted as saying, "I did it once, and I got the hell whipped out of me."

  Others, however, have come down on the opposite side of the question—and the blanket. One of them was Carmen Basilio who, when asked about sex before a fight, said, "It's not bad for the married guys 'cause they're at home. They're in bed early, and they get their sleep and get up and do their roadwork. It's those young guys who are single. They go out all night trying to pick up some bimbo and they're not going to get up and do their roadwork. That's where the lack of conditioning comes from. It's not about the sex." And Evander Holyfield, when asked about prohibiting sex before a fight, just laughed and said: "Managers, yes; fighters, no." In other words, to quote Casey Stengel, "It ain't the sex that'll kill you; it's the chasing after it."

  Still, the prevailing feeling among trainers is that while abstinence not only makes the heart grow fonder, it also makes their fighters meaner sons of bitches when they climb into the ring ready to take their frustrations out on their opponent. Former light-heavyweight champion Bob Foster gave voice to this belief, saying, "You can't see your wife for two and a half months. I was a mean SOB when I was training.... I didn't like my sparring partners ... I didn't like my trainers ... I didn't like nobody."

  Now when it comes to the question of sex before boxing, I've got to tell you I keep business and personal life separate. It's never been my style to get involved with my fighter's personal life. I learned my lesson very early on when I had a four-round fighter who came to me one day and said, "That wife of mine, what a pain in the ass she is...." Distracted, I just said, "Well, you know how women are ..." and left it at that. Wouldn't you know it, the fighter went home and told his wife, "Angie thinks you're wrong, ..." and I lost him. So whenever a fighter tries to say something to me about his private life, I just say, "Look, do me a favor, will ya? Go over and hit the light bag."

  Even with Willie, who apparently never met a gal with a headache, I tried not to be judgmental and allowed him some leeway as long as it didn't impair his performance in the ring. Hey, fighters are human beings. After all, as Charlie Goldman said, "One of the troubles with fighters today is that they don't start till they're interested in females." And while Willie may have been younger and just stumbled over them, you've got to try to be understanding. So I just kept a polite noninterest, figuring if he hadn't destroyed himself by now it wasn't for want of trying.

  A trainer's job has been described as one part motivator, one part strategist, one part physical culturalist, one part cut man, one part psychiatrist, and one part father figure. Nowhere in that job description will you find the term babysitter. So while I tried to be only minimally involved in my predicament-prone fighter's life and lifestyle, I brought aboard my pal Lou Gross to handle some of those duties. It was his job to superintend Willie, to make sure he wasn't making the rounds instead of fighting them.

  One time Lou was up in the Catskills making sure that Willie was not out chasing Miss Wrong. And Willie, who always liked his girls a little on the zaftig side, had made a play for the rather heavyset telephone operator at the summer resort, always saying things like "Hiya, Sweetie" when he passed her desk. It so happened that Lou had wandered away from the room they were sharing to purchase a cigar, and when he got back he noticed the switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree, with no one behind the desk. Hurrying up to the room, he found Willie in bed with the telephone operator.

  (Another example of the pitfalls of babysitting is what befell Charlie Goldman, who babysat Oscar Bonavena after his fight with Ali. Seems that Charlie awoke the next morning not only to find Bonavena gone, having departed for his home in Argentina, but also to discover he was missing his radio, which Bonavena had taken with him as a souvenir.)

  Maybe that was the reason I usually shared a room with my Don
Juan–wannabe on the road. And the reason I was in the hotel room that afternoon to receive a telephone call. But more about that later ...

  By the end of 1953 both Willie's and Ralph's careers continued, as Howard Cosell would say, apace, and their futures looked bright. But by 1958 both seemed to have hit a wall, Ralph losing to Joe Brown in his bid for the lightweight title and Willie, having added several notches to his belt, growing from a welterweight to a heavyweight where he decided to fight for larger purses with some moderate success against the bigger guys.

  Willie had been over to London twice to meet and beat Dick Richardson and Brian London, promoter Sam Solomons always preferring to stage international bouts with Americans versus Brits where the British fighter had "the slightest chance of winning." The crowds also liked Willie's style of fighting, sort of a throwback to the "sweet science" of their fistic forebears with lots of movement and defense. Now Solomons was bringing Willie back for a rematch with Brian London, the former British and Empire heavyweight champ who was in line to fight Henry Cooper in another shot at the title. London knew he couldn't let Willie fight his fight from the outside, there being no way in hell he could match Willie's speed nor catch him, so he had to bore his way in, trying mightily to make the fight into a brawl.