Angelo Dundee - My View from the Corner

Copyright 2009 by Angelo Dundee and Bert Randolph Sugar All rights reserved. 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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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

Muhammad Ali

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 Rodriguez, and others. I said to myself, One day Im 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 didnt like that type of camp.

So, I went to see Angelo. He wasnt bossy. He didnt 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.

Here I am after more than fifty years in boxingalmost sixty, but whos counting?and with all those wonderful moments pressed somewhere in the pages of my memory, I dont 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 Ive ever met: Muhammad Ali and Willie Pastrano. But its not the kind of story youd 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 Id be interested in working with his two kids. Ange, Esenault said, I got these two kids. Theyre both underage and can only fight six-rounders here, but theyre 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 Esenaults 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, hard-nosed street brawler, while Willie, in his own words, having been a five-foot, two hundredpound 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 Esenaults gym over at the St. Marys Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) to learn how to defend himselfand, not incidentally, to lose weight. The lessons took, and Willie soon followed his neighbors 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 2423 record; Willie, entering the pro ranks later, had a more modest one of 50l.

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