Dundee's admission

LAS VEGAS – Legendary Hall of Fame boxing trainer Angelo Dundee gave Manny Pacquiao a huge compliment when he said the other day the Filipino icon is a blessing to boxing.

Although Dundee predicted Oscar de la Hoya to beat Pacquiao, there was absolutely no disrespect intended. In fact, Dundee called Pacquiao a blessing before the Dream Match and said it to Larry Merchant on TV.

Dundee, 87, was brought out of virtual retirement to act as “adviser” for De la Hoya in preparing for Pacquiao. He played second fiddle to chief trainer Ignacio (Nacho) Beristain. Neither Dundee nor Beristain had ever worked with the Golden Boy.

Dundee was impressed by De la Hoya’s showing in the gym. “For a guy who’s 35, he looked like he was 27,” said Dundee.

What Dundee never anticipated was De la Hoya’s inability to bring his energy from the gym to the ring against Pacquiao who badly outhustled the Golden Boy and made him look an old man.

“Nobody fights like Pacquiao,” said Dundee, quoted by Kieran Mulvaney of Reuters. “He’s got his own style, he’s an awkward guy and he’s a busy guy.”

Dundee’s return to the big stage of world boxing came a little unexpected. De la Hoya probably wanted to use Dundee’s reputation as a tactic to get into Pacquiao’s head, a kind of mind game.

Perhaps, De la Hoya brought in Dundee so he could learn the Muhammad Ali shuffle. Maybe, De la Hoya’s idea was to transform himself into another Ali since Pacquiao, in a way, resembled Joe Frazier’s style. De la Hoya also counted on Dundee’s magic touch to rub off. Dundee, after all, was in George Foreman’s corner the night he scored a miraculous knockout win over Michael Moorer to win the heavyweight crown at the age of 45 in 1994.

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Dundee was more of a fatherly mentor to Ali than a trainer. Writer Hugh McIlvaney once said Dundee provided Ali with “safeguards against the destructive hysteria of his parasitic entourage.”

Dundee modestly confessed he was a psychological genius. “In all honesty, I think I did a good job of using applied psychology with fighters,” he said in his first book “I Only Talk Winning,” “I had been known to give a tired fighter half an aspirin during a fight, telling the kid that it was a pep pill and that he wouldn’t feel tired any more. It worked. I would never use the word tired when working a corner. If my guy looked exhausted, I might say that the other guy looked beat. I would try an approach to motivate my fighter.”

Beyond psychology, Dundee was also a sly operator in the corner. When Ali was nearly knocked out by Henry Cooper and saved by the bell in 1963, Dundee sued for a timeout to replace the Louisville Lip’s glove that had a small split along the seam. It was rumored that Dundee cut the glove with a small knife. The extra minutes it took to change the glove gave Ali time to recover.

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Dundee was born Angelo Mirena in 1921 and didn’t get involved in boxing until he met Joe Louis and Marcel Cerdan during US military tours before the war. He made a name for himself as a trainer, master tactician (remember Ali’s rope-a-dope trick in the Foreman fight?) cutman, ring psychologist and hustler.

“Dundee could patch a fighter’s face like a combat surgeon,” wrote Don Stradley in World Boxing Magazine. “If a fighter couldn’t make weight, Dundee knew how to trick the scales. He could help a fighter with fuzzy vision pass an eye exam and he could work most referees like a street hustler. He was a hunch player. If there was an edge to be gained, Dundee found it.”

Dundee said despite his age, he’s not finished with boxing. “I’m not an old fart,” he said. “I’m still healthy and working, doing my thing.” He runs a gym in South Florida but his work is mainly coordinating workout schedules and scouting.

Dundee was hired to train Russell Crowe for a month in Australia to prepare the actor for the movie “Cinderella Man.” Crowe was at ringside for Pacquiao’s fight against De la Hoya as Dundee’s guest.

“Russell is one of the nicest men I’ve ever met,” said Dundee, quoted by Barry Lindeman in Boxing Digest. “I include him as one of my best friends now. He’s a very talented athlete. He’s got an Olympic size pool at his ranch in Australia. I was in Australia for a month working with him and had a great time. I made him into Jim Braddock. I feel good about that.”

In his second book “My View from the Corner,” Dundee said his biggest regret is the state of boxing today. “It’s hurting,” he moaned. “Once one of the three major sports – along with baseball and horse racing – commanding headlines not only on the sports pages but the front pages as well, today it’s charitably No. 11 on the list of Top Ten sports, tucked somewhere under the shipping news.

“The biggest reason for the sport’s decline in interest, however, can be found by looking in the mirror, for the biggest enemy is ourselves. When I first entered the sport, there were eight divisions and eight world champions. Today, we have 17 divisions and the four alphabet soup sanctioning bodies can’t even get those straight.”

That’s why, with Pacquiao’s emergence as the undisputed world’s No. 1 fighter, pound for pound, Dundee said the sport has finally found someone to put integrity, excitement and valor back in the ring.