What if Ali didn't have Dundee in his corner?

Let's say, what If things hadn't worked out early on between Ali and Angelo Dundee?
Ali dismisses Dundee and he's not there for the important fights from Archie Moore onwards?

Getting rid of Ang would have had a profound negative effect on Muhammad imo.

 

I believe Ali would still be great regardless of who was in his corner. Greatness simply was in him. With that said, Dundee certainly added a lot and definitely was a huge asset tactically.

Dundee worked with Napoles, Pastrano, Ellis and later on Ray Leonard. He knew how to work with outside fighter's better than anyone in the history of the sport.

 

Don't forget he was in George's corner when he regained the heavyweight title at six hundred years old

 

True, but what Dundee really excelled at was taking mobile, athletic fighters and building around that skillet. George was never going to out box Moorer. It was all about catching him with a big shot which he did.

 

Whilst Ali would still have been great, having Dundee helped him enormously imo.
He grounded Ali somewhat in the corner, which is what he needed at times, that's a definitely underrated asset a fighter like he needed.
He definitely helped him in the first Cooper fight and also during the' Liston Chemicals in the eye 'incident.

 

Muhammad would have been great no matter what,imo. But Angelo definitely helped him a lot.

 

Ali might have just been a flash in the pan if Dundee wasn't in his corner during the first Liston bout--his quick thinking and control of the situation at the end of the 4th round saved the day!!

 

Once Ali became champ, it wouldn't have mattered. Dundee readily admitted he often would just come in the last two weeks or so when the media was there to wrap up training and work the corner for the fight.

Wali Muhammad supervised his training during the training camps. But sometimes those weren't very long camps, given how frequently he fought. Dundee had other fighters.

Ali showed against Ellis in 1971, when Dundee worked Jimmy's corner, that it didn't really matter who he had in his corner, at that point. Ellis was his top and longtime sparring partner. Dundee was his trainer of record. And Ali didn't miss either of them.

But Dundee helped on the climb up the ladder.

 

Ali had the great Harry Wiley who trained Sugar Ray Robinson in his corner for the Ellis fight. He taught Ali the shoulder roll and he executed it perfectly for that fight. He should have used it more. He looked great.

 

Dundee was a plus to a young Cassius Clay later Ali . But in the ring the biggest job a corner has is to protect their fighter and Dundee utterly failed by putting a clearly brain damaged Ali in with a prime Larry Holmes, then as if that beating weren't enough he went with him BACK into the ring with Berbick.
If he cared at all Angelo Dundee should have walked like Dr. Ferdie Pacheco did who warned Ali about his mental and physical condition years earlier

 

He used the shoulder roll against Foreman, used his shoulder at least once against Mildenberger, tucked his chin behind his shoulder pre-exile when he was dancing and then would blade and pivot and jab to the body.

Ali has instances of demonstrating rather fundamental, orthodox defensive and offensive moves ... when he wants to.

 

Also with Cooper.

I don't know about other fights, but he saved Ali's ass twice with quick thinking and situation control.

 

Bundini also helped him come up with those clever lines. In camp, Ali would sit with Bundini and shoot insults and clever phrases about opponents back and forth. Plenty of what Ali said was his own; plenty of it was stuff Bundini came up with.

 

First off, Angelo did not ‘put him in with Holmes. Ali made that choice, same as he did with Berbick.

Secondly, no matter how anyone wants to rewrite history, Ali was not known to have brain damage (or Parkinson’s at the time of either fight (was there ever an actual diagnosis of brain damage at any point?).

li went to the Mayo Clinic before the Holmes fight to be checked out by some of the top medical experts in the world. He was checked out at UCLA before the Berbick fight. The commission had the results from the Mayo Clinic and certified him fit to fight. The UCLA report was released although I’m not sure whatever commission the Bahamas had was qualified to know what they were doing.

Ferdie’s concerns, stated publicly at the time, were that Ali might have kidney problems. He is the doctor who was closes to Ali and he never once raised any issues with the possibility of brain damage or Parkinson’s. After Ali was seen by the Mayo Clinic, Ferdie told either The NY Times or the Washington Post that he still wished Ali would retire but it was “no longer a medical decision” and now was a personal decision on whether Ali wanted to fight or not.

As for Dundee, he had a choice: He could either be there for the man whether he thought he should be fighting or not; or he could abandon him because he didn’t think he should still be fighting — and leave him at the mercy of perhaps someone unqualified (or certainly not as qualified or experienced or with as much knowledge about Ali as Dundee was). He chose the former. Ali would have fought with or without him.

If Dundee isn’t in the corner for the Holmes fight, Bundini probably prevails on letting the fight go on even longer. Dundee stopped it. You can argue that he did so too late, but at least he did. If Angelo isn’t there, you probably end up with someone on par with Tyson’s corner vs Douglas (using a rubber glove filled with water rather than an Enswell) left to make that decision.

It wasn’t Dundee’s choice whether Ali had those last two fights, it was Muhammad’s. He chose to be there. Same as people choose to support friends or family members who do dangerous things — bungee jump, rock climbing without a rope, etc.