Training the Greatest: The Story of Ali and Dundee
Photograph and caption courtesy of The Courier-Journal, December 20, 1969.
Three Years Without Ali
After Muhammad Ali was exiled from the world of professional boxing and stripped of his heavyweight championship title, he traveled around the United States speaking at various college campuses and events, while simultaneously facing the United States Supreme Court to overturn his conviction for refusing to be drafted for the Vietnam War.
While they were no longer training together, they did get to meet again for one boxing match: The Super Fight. This was a staged boxing match between Ali and former, undefeated heavyweight champion, Rocky Marciano. The two fighters were filmed fighting for 70, one-minute rounds, and the winner was determined by a computer program. When the fight was shown in 1,500 theaters across the United states and in Europe, there were different endings. In the United States, Marciano won, and in Europe, Ali won. Dundee was happy to reprise his role as a cornerman, and his brother, Chris, got to play the referee.
Without his friend and star fighter, Angelo Dundee had to place his focus elsewhere. There were many other boxers training under him at the Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach, Florida. One of them, he decided, had the makings of a champion. That boxer was Jimmy Ellis.
Ellis, another boxer from Louisville, Kentucky, was inspired to start boxing after watching Muhammad Ali fight as an amateur on a local television broadcast, Tomorrow's Champions. He, like Ali, began his training at the Columbia Gym under Joe Martin, and eventually found his way to the Fifth Street Gym. He worked as Ali's sparring partner, though Dundee despised that term, as he said in his book, My View From the Corner:
"Now I abhor the words 'sparring partner.' I hate them because my kids work with each other, help each other. They are not sparring partners, per se, but really assistants."
Ellis went on to win the "vacant" World Boxing Association Heavyweight Champion Title, which he then lost to Joe Frazier. Frazier's win would eventually lead to one of fiercest rivalries that the world of sports has ever seen.
