My View from the Corner

by Angelo Dundee

  At the end of the seventh Muhammad performed a little Ali shuffle on his way back to the corner, a tiny celebration to be sure, but one I wouldn't put up with, and I told him to knock it off. He didn't need any of that, we were beating Spinks with plain ol' boxing. No frills, thank you. The hapless Spinks returned to his corner in search of something, anything, that might help. But, truth to tell, his corner was in worse shape than Leon, if that were possible. I looked over and saw what looked like organized madness with everyone in Spinks's dysfunctional corner shouting instructions at once and I thought to myself, their crazies could certainly match our crazies.

  As I was to find out later, Sam Solomon, Spinks's principal trainer, was joined in the corner by Georgie Benton, the architect of Spinks's win in the first fight. Solomon's plan for instructing Spinks called for Solomon and Benton, along with anyone else in Spinks's corner, to speak to Leon only after every third or fourth round. If they had something to communicate to Spinks and it wasn't their turn, they had to tell whoever's turn it was to relay it to Leon. That is, if they chose to. It was almost as if they needed a scorecard to keep track of who was telling who what. It reminded me of that old limerick about two people arguing all night over who had the right to do what and to whom. Over on our side of the ring we could hear people in Leon's Tower of Babel corner screaming "wiggle" or "move" or "don't get hurt" or other such nonsense. One of the saddest sights I've ever seen was a disgusted Georgie Benton, having given up with all that craziness, walking up the aisle, away from the ring, eyes on the ground, while Leon came out for another round still not knowing what to do.

  It wouldn't have mattered much what anyone told Leon; he was lost. So, too, was the fight, as every round began to mirror the previous one with Muhammad still dancing as if he had discovered his own personal wayback machine, and Leon chasing him but never quite catching up. The huge Superdome crowd, now sensing they were part of boxing history, began cheering loudly with every punch Ali landed. They cheered even more loudly when Ali began leading their cheers. But their loudest roar came when the decision was announced—a unanimous one, 10–4–1, 10–4–1, and 11–4, all for Ali.

  Ali had done it! He had become heavyweight champion a third time. Is there anything grander than a grand comeback?

  The second Spinks fight was hardly "Fight of the Century" stuff. Far from it. From a "sweet science" standpoint, it was sloppy. But it was beautifully sloppy, wonderfully sloppy, gorgeously sloppy. No showboating, no rope-a-dopes, no taunting, just Muhammad getting in there and doing his number. It was vintage Ali.

  Muhammad always had a sense of history. He had wanted to become the first and only heavyweight champion to win the world title for a third time. And he had. Now he wanted to, as he said, "be the first black champion to get out on top." And to listen to him, he intended to, retiring the morning after the Spinks fight.

  Oh, I know he had retired before. So many times he was probably listed in the Guinness Book of Records under "Most Times Retired." But when Ali said, "I don't want to fight no more. I've been doing it for twenty-five years, and you can only do so much wear to the body. I can see it, I can feel it," I thought this time he really meant it. This time he was finally prepared to call it a day and venture out to discover life after boxing.

  "The Ali Years," as my bride Helen called them, had finally come to an end. We had traveled many roads together on Ali's magic carpet, faraway places like Zaire, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Las Vegas, Tokyo, Munich, San Juan, New York, and New Orleans. I was always in his corner, sometimes cajoling, sometimes suggesting, and sometimes demanding things from him in both hard and easy fights. And it had always been a gas just being around him. These were some of the best days of my life, exciting times that would provide memories I would cherish forever. But now it was time for me to close the book on the Ali chapter and get on with my life.

  Or so I thought. Jump-skip almost two years later and there I was up in Montreal with my fighter Sugar Ray Leonard preparing for his fight with Roberto Duran, and here comes Muhammad hardly looking like that handsome bright-eyed, beaming-faced youngster of yesterday who used to say, "Look at me, I'm so pretty ... not a mark on my face." His once magnificent shape had gone to pot over a disappearing belt line, his once powerful voice was muffled, his hair was graying. He bore all the vestiges of middle age. During those intervening months he had toured the world doing star turns, cashing in on his brand name by appearing here, there, and everywhere. Still, that old fire burned within. Believing he had one more good fight left in him and one more chance to stand there basking in the glow and hearing his fans chant "AL-LEE" one last time—and no doubt also seduced by the chance to make history by winning the heavyweight title a fourth time along with an $8 million guarantee for such a fistic first—he now wanted to fight current heavyweight champ Larry Holmes. And he wanted me in his corner again.

  When I joined Muhammad at Deer Lake for the final stages of his training for the Holmes fight I barely recognized him. He had lost more than thirty pounds, his voice was back in full throttle, and his hair was now black (courtesy, he said, of "a little black hair rinse"). He looked terrific. He told me that when he saw me up in Montreal "my thyroid glands were acting up." But, he said, "I took two pills a day for a month and it's all cleared up now." Those "two pills a day" he referred to were a thyroid medicine, Thyrolar, prescribed by Herbert Muhammad's personal physician.

  His great looking physical condition was like something that looked good in a store window, but when you got it home it was nothing like what you thought it to be. He had nothing, no reserves, no strength, no fatty tissue to burn up. And you knew it was more than just Father Time taking a toll on his thirty-eight-year-old body, it was those damned pills, which help you lose weight but take your strength away. Their effect, in the words of Dr. Ferdie Pacheco was "like burning the tires off a race car and telling the driver to race without wheels."

  On October 2, 1980, after an absence of two years and seventeen days, Muhammad Ali climbed back into the ring again looking for five or six minutes like the Ali of old. Unfortunately, those five or six minutes came before the opening bell. There was Ali playacting, leading the Caesars Palace crowd in cheers for himself and boos for Holmes, hollering, "I want you, Holmes, I want you," at the WBC champ, and lunging first at Holmes's championship belt, then at Holmes himself, forcing Bundini Brown and yours truly to "restraint" him—and almost causing me to sprain my little finger "holding" him back.

  As for the fight itself, Ali had nothing, zip, zilch, nada. It was a futile left jab that never jabbed, a cocked right that never uncocked, and a battle plan that never went into battle. Almost from the first punch thrown, a stiff jab by Holmes, it was obvious this was the ghost of Ali past. By the fourth he was a rag doll, the only thing holding him up was his pride. By the ninth he was all but defenseless.

  After the ninth referee Richard Greene came over to our corner to ask whether Ali wanted to continue. Not wanting to suffer the humiliation of being stopped on his stool, the bone-weary Ali, who had given the boxing world 539 rounds, decided on yet another one, nodding his head "yes" to my question of "Do you want to do it?" I told him, "If you don't start throwing punches in this round, I'm gonna stop this fight."

  But Round Ten was no different from any other round as Holmes drove Ali to the ropes, battering his already sore body, raking his puffed eyes with battering-ram jabs and prolonging the misery by holding back his right-hand shots to the totally unprotected body of Ali, all the while pleading with referee Greene to come to the aid of the man he idolized. It was three more minutes of pure agony for Ali and his faithful. And then the bell.

  Once again referee Greene hurried over to the corner, concerned about Ali's inability to defend himself. I knew that Ali was looking for someone to save him since he couldn't do it himself, and I wigwagged my hands to say it was "over." All of a sudden I felt someone tugging at my sweater. It was Bundini, refusing to believe the fight was over, pushing and pulling at me, ple
ading for "one more round." I couldn't help myself, but I had to scream at Bundini, who was in tears, "Take your goddamn hands off me. He can't take any more. He's defenseless. Get the hell away from me.... I'm boss here. It's over." I knew I was right and so, too, did Muhammad who, through swollen lips, muttered, "Thank you."

  It broke my heart to stop the Holmes fight. It was the worst beating Muhammad ever took. He not only hadn't won a round, he hadn't won one second of any round. If you believe there is any truth in advertising you would have believed that his fight against Holmes, billed as "The Last Hurrah," was exactly that, Ali's last hurrah, his last fight. But then again this was boxing, so what do you expect?

  And so, fourteen months after his sad performance against Holmes, Ali decided to take one more fight, sort of a "Son of the Last Hurrah," this time against Trevor Berbick. Offering up the excuse that his poor effort against Holmes was due to those debilitating thyroid pills, Ali wanted one more fight, one fight strictly for himself. He was two months shy of his fortieth birthday and still thought there might be a chance to close out his career with a "W," not the ugly "L" that marked the result of his fight with Holmes.

  The less said about the fight the better. The wheels had come off the once beautiful fighting machine known as Muhammad Ali, and there was nothing there that night in the Bahamas when he lost to the tag team of Trevor Berbick and Father Time. Afterward Ali said, "I couldn't show and now I know ... Father Time got me."

  The final bell, a cowbell substituted for the missing ring bell, not only signaled the end of his ten-round fight with Berbick, it also tolled the end of his great sixty-one-fight career, one of the greatest in the history of the sport. With a résumé that included every leading heavyweight from Floyd Patterson to George Foreman—whose careers spanned forty-five years, from Patterson's first fight in 1952 to Foreman's last in 1997—this embodiment of athletic intelligence who flaired to be different had become an international hero, one whose face had become the most recognized in the world.

  But over and above those hard-edged facts and figures that can be found in any old Ring Record Book, there were those many outside-the-ring moments that went unrecorded that tell the story of Muhammad Ali better than his ring record. Those moments when he gave of himself, like the time he was being led into a Super Bowl Party for VIPs and detoured into the kitchen "to see my people," the kitchen help. Or the time, just hours after beating George Foreman, when he went into the nearby village and spent time showing the kids magic tricks. Or when he left the ring after beating Brian London to comfort London's son, telling the young London that his father was "not hurt" and "was a good man." Or when, in the company of Gene Kilroy, he visited a nursing home and one ancient gentleman looked up and said, "Joe Louis?" His whole life this man had wanted to meet Joe Louis, so Ali signed an autograph for him as "Joe Louis," saying, "We all look alike to him so let him think he met Joe."

  That clanking cowbell that ended the Berbick fight also marked the end of my close boxing relationship with Ali, one that had begun, fittingly enough, twenty-two years before with the ringing of the phone in my Louisville hotel room. During the two decades we were together I came to enjoy his wonderful love for life. Let me tell you, the big key was laughter. That was the whole key with this kid. He always had fun. No matter how tough the situation was, we had fun. He always found a way to laugh and make others around him laugh.

  I can't do better than quote the great poet Maya Angelou who wrote of Ali: "His impact recognizes no continent, no language, no color, no ocean. ... Muhammad Ali belongs to all of us." And for almost twenty-two years I was fortunate that he belonged not to me as much as with me. Great men and great monuments don't relinquish their hold on anyone. And Muhammad Ali was both. Especially to me.

  FOURTEEN

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

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

  By nature, boxing is an orderly sport with one champion following another in a systematic progression. That continuity also occurs when one boxing legend passes the torch to another, whether in the ring or in the public's mind.

  And although Muhammad Ali would say, "After I retire, boxing will die," there was already someone waiting in the wings to take his place even though Muhammad hadn't quite deeded it over. Not yet anyway.

  By 1976 Muhammad Ali was in the twilight of his career, his glory days behind him. It looked like the sport of boxing's glory days were behind it as well. But at that magic moment, boxing was about to reenter the spotlight again, this time courtesy of amateur boxing.

  Now what I knew about amateur boxing could be written on the head of a pin with more than enough room left over for the Lord's Prayer. I really didn't know one amateur boxer from another. However, the 1976 Olympics would change all of that, not only for me but for millions of Americans as well, as ABC-TV showcased the American boxing team during prime time. Never before had so much attention been devoted to amateur boxing. On the American boxing team were Leo Randolph (flyweight), Howard Davis Jr. (lightweight), Ray Leonard (light-welterweight), Michael Spinks (middleweight), and brother Leon Spinks (light-heavyweight). During the previous Olympics, the American boxing team had won just one gold medal. This 1976 team would come away with a record five gold medals.

  Behind the microphone, ABC announcer Howard Cosell shared in their glory, focusing on each with his own special brand of "tell-it-like-it-is" enthusiasm. The man who had been attacked by many after he had championed Muhammad's cause was now lauded by the very same people who had once questioned his patriotism. The favorable mail came flooding into the ABC offices. One came from the Commandant of the Marine Corps who thanked Cosell "on behalf of the Marines" for "taking time to include mention of the fact that Corporal (Leon) Spinks is a United States Marine." The Commandant's letter went on to add, "Your own characteristically professional performance added greatly to the enjoyment of the evening."

  Spinks was hardly the only object of Cosell's attention. He spread his multisyllabic words around to paint a verbal picture of each American Olympian. But none received more attention than the light-welterweight gold medalist, the fighter he called "Sugar" Ray Leonard. Cosell focused on Leonard's boy-next-door looks and, more than occasionally, mentioned that Leonard carried a picture of his girlfriend and two-year-old son in his sock. But what was obvious to anyone watching the telecast—even the man he was named for, singer Ray Charles—was Leonard's incredibly fast hands and exceptional movement. The kid had so much talent that it should have been ruled illegal. "Sugar" Ray Leonard was Americana, he was home cooking, and he was the symbol of a new era in boxing. And guess who first brought Ray to America's attention? Howard Cosell, that's who.

  The next time I saw Ray was in person. Madison Square Garden had thrown a gala to honor the Olympic champions the week before the third Muhammad Ali–Ken Norton fight, and my friend Gene Kilroy brought Ray over to sit next to Muhammad Ali. As Ray sat there like a starstruck twelve-year-old with saucer-cup eyes looking at his idol, Muhammad turned to him and said, "You're good, you're fast, and you're going to be like me." Then he added, "And if you ever go pro, you need pros around you." It was at that moment that Kilroy introduced me to Leonard with a " ... and here's the guy who made Muhammad Ali, Angelo Dundee." Ali, never far from a conversation, chimed in with, "Yeah, Angelo Dundee, and if you ever go pro, he's the guy for you. He's a good guy, loyal, dedicated, and honest." And that was that. At least for the moment.

  After his Olympic triumph Ray retired—the first of his many retirements—wanting instead "to go to school and work with kids." However, his father needed medical attention and as the breadwinner of the family, Ray needed money to cover the necessary expenses. So, he changed his mind, telling his longtime friend Janks Morton, "I'm going to fight as a pro."

  Now that he had decided to carry on with his career, Ray became a hot property with several offers made to handle him. One of the first came from Abe Pol
lin, the owner of the Washington basketball and hockey franchises and of Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland. Pollin proposed lending Ray $50,000 to start his training. Ray would then "pay me back from his purses," Pollin cutting himself in for 60 percent. That offer met with a "Thanks, but no thanks."

  Another who made a pass at Ray was promoter Don King who, between rounds of the Ali-Norton fight at Yankee Stadium, invited Ray and Janks to the men's room where he pushed a contract under their noses. Janks took one look at the numbers and told Ray to "flush it down the stool" and with that Ray washed his hands of it.

  It now became apparent to Ray that he needed help preparing himself for his pro career. And so it was that Janks took him to see the manager of his softball team, Mike Trainer, who just happened to be a lawyer. Trainer, from what I gathered, told Ray something along the lines of, "If you're really thinking about doing it and if you really think you can box professionally, why do you want to sell part of yourself? Why don't you just set it up as a business where you own 100 percent of yourself? You go to the bank and borrow some money; then pay off your loan and everything's fine."