Angelo Dundee with Sugar Ray Leonard in 1987.
| In his memoir, Dundee said that he and Ali "had this special thing, a unique blend, a chemistry." | "I never heard anything resembling a racist comment leave his mouth," he said. "There was never a black-white divide." | Dundee knew all the tricks in the boxing trade, and then some. | 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. Then he brought the badly damaged glove to the referee's attention. Dundee was told that a substitute glove wasn't available, and the few seconds of delay helped Clay recover. He knocked Cooper out in the fifth round. | 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 used a razor blade to cut and refit them so they were tight, enabling Ali to bounce off them when Foreman unleashed his "anywhere" punches from all angles. Ali wore Foreman out, hanging back with the "rope-a-dope" strategy Ali undertook on his own, and he went on to win the bout. | Dundee became Leonard's manager and cornerman when he turned pro in 1977. He taught Leonard to snap his left jab rather than paw with it and guided him to the welterweight championship with a knockout of Wilfred Benitez in 1979. | Roberto Duran captured Leonard's title on a decision in June 1980, but Leonard won the rematch in November when Dundee persuaded him to avoid a slugfest and instead keep Duran turning while slipping his jabs. A thoroughly beaten Duran quit in the eighth round, uttering his inglorious "no mas." | Dundee enjoyed chatting with reporters — he called himself a "mixologist" — and he tried to "blend" with his fighters, creating a rapport rather than imposing himself on them. | In talking about his boxing savvy, he liked to say "when I see things through my eyes, I see things." | "When Dundee speaks, traditional English usage is, to say the least, stretched and malapropisms abound," Ronald K. Fried wrote in "Cornermen: Great Boxing Trainers." | "Yet the language is utterly original and Dundee's own — and it conveys exactly what Dundee knows in his heart." | After retiring from full-time training, Dundee had stints in boxing broadcasting. He taught boxing technique to Russell Crowe for his role as the 1930s heavyweight champion Jimmy Braddock in the 2005 Hollywood movie "Cinderella Man." | A complete list of survivors was not immediately available. | Dundee once remarked: "I'm not star quality. The fighter is the star." | But he took pride in his craft. As he put it: "You've got to combine certain qualities belonging to a doctor, an engineer, a psychologist and sometimes an actor, in addition to knowing your specific art well. There are more sides to being a trainer than those found on a Rubik's Cube." |