TAMPA, Fla. — Angelo Dundee, the brilliant motivator who worked the corner for Muhammad Ali in his greatest fights and willed Sugar Ray Leonard to victory in his famed 1981 fight against Thomas Hearns, died Wednesday. He was 90.
The genial Dundee was best known for being in Ali’s corner for almost his entire career, but those in boxing also knew him as an ambassador for boxing and a figure of integrity in a sport that often lacked it.
He died with his family around him, son Jimmy Dundee said, but not before attending Ali’s 70th birthday bash in Louisville, Ky., last month.
“It was the way he wanted to go,” Jimmy Dundee said. “He did everything he wanted to do.”
Dundee was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1994 after a career that spanned six decades, training 15 world champions, including Leonard, George Foreman, Carmen Basilio and Jose Napoles.
But he will always be linked to Ali as one of the most successful fighter-trainer relationships in boxing history, helping Ali become the first to win the heavyweight title three times. The two would travel around the world for fights to such obscure places as Ali’s October 1974 bout in Zaire against Foreman, dubbed “The Rumble in the Jungle,” and Ali’s third fight against Joe Frazier in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, called by promoters the “Thrilla in Manila.”
