April 15, 2004

When he sees things through his own eyes, Angelo Dundee has often said, he sees things. Minute, almost invisible, things.

There was the time in Zaire almost 30 years ago when, spying behind a curtain, he noticed that if the seemingly invincible George Foreman pinned a fighter on the ropes, he could shift well to his left but that his trunky legs would become crossed when moving to the right. He noticed that Foreman did not fall for shoulder feints but did for hand feints, and that he kept his big feet close together, which upset his balance.

In gruff, spit-bucket verse, Dundee has barked and whispered these things to his champions, like Muhammad Ali and Carmen Basilio and Sugar Ray Leonard, while maintaining the chameleonlike ability to blend with outlandish personalities.

Dundee is 82, but he still has his eyes looking out for one big heavyweight, Attila Levin, a soft-spoken, heavy-handed prospect who at age 16 left his native Sweden to live and train near Dundee in South Florida.

At Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan tonight, Dundee, along with the full-time trainer Louis Lagermann, will be working the corner for the 27-year-old Levin, who faces his toughest opponent to date in Jeremy Williams (40-4 with 35 knockouts), a charismatic slugger from Los Angeles who is looking to resuscitate his career after sporadic appearances in recent years.

"This kid is the whole ball of wax, throws every punch in the book" is the way Dundee described Levin.

Dundee, like many others, learned his trade in Manhattan at the old Stillman's Gym, which the writer A. J. Liebling elegantly referred to as the University of Eighth Avenue. During the day, Dundee ran errands and took phone calls for fight legends like Whitey Bimstein and Ray Arcel. At night, he slept on a couch in Room 711 of the Capitol Hotel, which also served as the office for Dundee's older brother Chris, a promoter.

But those scrappy days are dusty memories now. Although Dundee has spent the past couple of weeks in Toronto advising the actor Russell Crowe as he prepares for "Cinderella Man," a film that follows the life of the Depression-era heavyweight James J. Braddock, he possesses that other invaluable Stillman's quality: the ability to sell his fighter.

"He's the heavyweight division's best-kept secret," Dundee said of Levin. "We've brought him along just right, and he punches like a mule."

Of Dundee, Levin said: "He has so much experience. When he tells you something, you try it."

Although the 6-foot-4, 241-pound Levin (29-1) can put some pop behind his punches, many of his 23 knockouts have come against opponents who come up short in the chin department, who walk into shots, stagger and hit the deck for cover.

"He's a stand-up, fall-down European boxer," Williams, 31, said of Levin. "He hasn't been down and dirty in the trenches. I've been in the trenches."

Tonight will be the first time that everyone on a card will fight under a collective agreement negotiated by the Joint Association of Boxers, a fledgling union that looks to represent prizefighters.

About a year ago, the former boxing champion and trainer Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, along with the Bronx-based labor lawyer Walter Kane and his brother Danny Kane, president of a Teamsters union local, came up with the idea to organize and affiliated with the Teamsters.

While most of association's activity has centered on an informational outreach campaign—namely Muhammad handing out union cards to fighters at gyms around the country—tonight is also the first time that the group has contracted for protective safeguards and higher wages.

The deal, in essence, works like this: In exchange for the association helping to sell tickets, each fighter receives a higher purse. On the undercard, for instance, four-round fighters who typically earn $400 a bout will earn a minimum $1,000. Marquee fighters like Levin and Williams will take home $2,500 more than the $20,000 they were contracted to earn before the association became involved. Union dues are 3 percent of a fighter's purse.
 

This article originally appeared in the New York Times on April 15, 2004 and was written by Geoffrey Gray.
 

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