BOXING:The renowned trainer died on Wednesday after 60 years of guiding some of the world's greatest fighters, writes RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

ANGELO DUNDEE, the renowned trainer who guided Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard to boxing glory, died on Wednesday in Tampa, Florida. He was 90. His death was announced by his son Jimmy, the Associated Press said. In more than 60 years in professional boxing, Dundee gained acclaim as a brilliant cornerman, whether healing cuts, inspiring his fighters to battle on when they seemed to be reeling or adjusting strategy between rounds to counter an opponent’s style.

“In that one minute, Angelo is Godzilla and Superman rolled into one,” Dr Ferdie Pacheco, who often worked with Dundee and then became a TV boxing analyst, once remarked.

“You come back to the corner and he’ll say, ‘The guy’s open for a hook, or this or that’,” Ali told the New York Times in 1981. “If he tells you something during a fight, you can believe it. As a cornerman, Angelo is the best in the world.”

Dundee’s first champion was Carmen Basilio, the welterweight and middleweight titleholder of the 1950s from upstate New York. Although best remembered for Ali and Leonard, he also trained the light-heavyweight champion Willie Pastrano, the heavyweight titleholder Jimmy Ellis and the welterweight champion Luis Rodriguez. Dundee advised George Foreman when he regained the heavyweight title at the age of 45. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1994.

Born Angelo Mirena, a Philadelphia native and the son of a railroad worker, he became Angelo Dundee after his brother Joe fought professionally under the name Johnny Dundee, in tribute to a former featherweight champion, and another brother, Chris, also adopted the name.

After working as a cornerman at military boxing tournaments in England while in the Army Air Forces during the second World War, Dundee served an apprenticeship at Stillman’s Gym near the old Madison Square Garden in New York, learning his craft from veteran trainers like Ray Arcel, Charley Goldman and Chickie Ferrara.

In the early 1950s, he teamed with his brother Chris to open the Fifth Street gym in Miami Beach, Florida. It became their long-time base, Angelo as a trainer and Chris as a promoter.

In the late 1950s, Dundee gave some tips to a promising amateur heavyweight named Cassius Clay, and in December 1960, after Clay’s first pro bout, Dundee became his trainer, working with him in Miami Beach. He guided him to the heavyweight title with a knockout of Sonny Liston in February 1964.

Dundee avoided the temptation to tamper with the brilliance of his young and charismatic fighter, and he used a bit of psychology in honing his talents. “I never touched that natural stuff with him,” Dundee recalled in his memoir, My View From the Corner, written with Bert Randolph Sugar.

“However, training Cassius was not quite the same as training another fighter. Some guys take direction and some don’t, and this kid had to be handled with kid gloves. So every now and then I’d subtly suggest some move or other to him, couching it as if it were something he was already doing. “I’d say something like: ‘You’re getting that jab down real good. You’re bending your knees now and you’re putting a lot of snap into it’. Now, he had never thrown a jab, but it was a way of letting him think it was his idea, his innovation.”

When Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali soon after winning the heavyweight title, his boxing management and financial affairs were handled by the Nation of Islam. Dundee was the only white man in his camp, and he grew disturbed over references to that fact.

In his memoir, Dundee said 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 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 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 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." – New York Times