SOME OF THE finest boxers of the early 1960s trained alongside Clay under Angelo’s guidance. In 1961, the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro outlawed professional boxing in Cuba, sending dozens of skillful Cuban boxers into exile in the United States, and especially Miami, where they added to Dundee’s pool of talent. Willie Pastrano won the light-heavyweight championship in 1963, the same year that Ralph Dupas captured the junior middleweight title, Ultiminio “Sugar” Ramos the featherweight crown, and Luis Rodríguez the welterweight belt. Every week, it seemed, Angelo and one of his contenders headed to some world capital for an important match. It was a heady time, with talk of big-money title fights and the smell of success cutting through the malodorous, low-rent atmosphere of the 5th Street Gym.
But at the center of the action was young Cassius, just beginning his professional career and fighting in small-money preliminary matches, but with an ego and energy that filled the gym. Observing the action inside the facility, sportswriter Myron Cope wrote, “Cassius reigns over the gym’s white, Negro, and Cuban fighters like the leader of a street gang who has established his authority merely by talking his subjects into submission. He jabbers away at the Cubans in homemade, simulated Spanish, and they throw up their hands and walk away, shouting, ‘Ni?o con boca grande!’—the baby has a big mouth.” There was no resentment in the comment, just a statement of fact.9
In Cassius’s case, trainer and fighter were ideally matched. Dundee saw immediately that by the standards of classic boxing Clay was a deeply flawed fighter. He kept his hands too low, often avoided punches by moving straight back, and was a dyed-in-the-wool headhunter. He did not even faintly resemble Joe Louis or Sonny Liston, hard-punching heavyweights with wonderful balance, great left jabs, and knockout power in both hands.
But for all his deficiencies, Cassius had assets. Most obviously, he had extraordinary hand and foot speed. When he arrived in Miami, he was a small heavyweight, weighing only 182 pounds, but his quickness was more than just the result of size. Probably no heavyweight had ever been as fast as Clay, certainly none in the early 1960s, when most, with the exception of Floyd Patterson, tended to be orthodox plodders.
Less readily apparent, Clay’s sense of distance was nearly perfect. This ability is crucial in boxing. Throw a punch from too far away, and it falls short of its target. Throw it too close, and it loses its full leverage. In addition, a fighter who moves too close to an opponent is easier to tie up. Clay’s speed allowed him to dart in and out; his sense of distance permitted him to throw a punch at the ideal moment, when it could reach its target with maximum force. Almost no fighter could snap out a jab as quickly or accurately as Clay, and none could deliver a faster right-hand lead. Furthermore, his quickness and sense of distance allowed him to dodge his opponent’s punches, sometimes by mere inches.
Many trainers would have winced at Clay’s glaring flaws and attempted to teach him proper technique. Dundee, however, focused on Cassius’s magnificent assets. To be sure, he tried to refine Clay’s unorthodox style, smoothing his herky-jerky movements. He worked on his balance, convincing him to throw more flat-footed power punches, and advised him to get his weight behind his blows. But crucially, Angelo did not seek to fundamentally change Cassius’s style. He believed that every fighter was unique and should be treated that way. “There’s not two alike,” he noted. “You don’t say, ‘This guy fights like this guy.’ They don’t. They’re all individuals. They all got their own idiosyncrasies, got their own rhythm.”10
Much as Cassius may have imagined himself as another Sugar Ray Robinson, Dundee’s primary job was to train Cassius Clay to box like Cassius Clay. After listening to Clay talk and watching him spar, Dundee told his fighter, “You, my friend, are neither Sugar Ray Robinson nor Archie Moore, and you’ve got a long way to go before you will even resemble them. Who you are is Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., and that’s the man I’m going to teach you to fight like. A guy is never going to get anywhere thinking he’s somebody else.”11
Angelo quickly realized that, for all his bluster, Cassius was a dedicated athlete. He came to the gym on time, trained tirelessly, and learned quickly, as long as the lessons were packaged correctly. Dundee seldom told Clay what to do; rather, he made Cassius feel like he was the source of every improvement. “I didn’t train him,” Dundee recalled. “I advised him. He’d be in the gym and I’d say, ‘You’re really putting your left hand into that jab. You’re really snapping it.’ Then, when I’d see him doing something right again, I’d say, ‘Oh my God, I’ve never seen a heavyweight throw a left uppercut so perfectly. Oh boy!’ Then he’d throw it again. And again.”12