Corner man who made a champ of Ali Boxing is still sometimes called the "sweet science," which it is, but only at its rare best. Angelo Dundee, the great trainer who died this week at 90, was, by common consensus, a sweet man who understood the science backwards but who was also ready, in a pinch, to bend its rules to achieve victory for his man. He will be forever known for his association with Muhammad Ali, the nonpareil heavyweight champion whose career he guided from his second professional fight in 1960 when he was still Cassius Clay. He was Ali's trainer and "corner man" for all but two of his heavyweight title fights, and he served the same function for 13 other champions, most notably the incandescent middleweight, Sugar Ray Leonard. IN Obituaries His technique was subtle, the hallmark of a born psychologist. "I never interfered with the natural stuff," he once said of Ali's instinctive talents. Instead he allowed his man to think that Dundee's ideas, like making the jab a more potent weapon, were his own. But, as he put it, when the round ends, "that's when the trainer takes over." That happened, to decisive effect, more than once. In Clay's first title fight against the massive Sonny Liston in 1964, he complained after four rounds he could not see. Dundee suspected linament on Liston's gloves had got into his man's eyes and Clay wanted to quit, but there was no time to do anything about it. So he ordered Clay to get back into the ring and run. His vision cleared and two rounds later an exhausted Liston retired, claiming an injured shoulder, and the world had a new heavyweight champion. Dundee also recognised early on that his charge was imbued with an outsized and outspoken personality (his early nickname, the Louisville Lip, was his trainer's creation). Consequently he never tried to rein in Ali out of the ring, most famously when he refused induction into the Army ("I ain't got no fight with them Viet Cong") and was stripped of his titles, nor, indeed, when he became a member of the Nation of Islam (also known as the Black Muslims) and changed his name. Dundee, a white man, remained in the inner circle, quietly supportive throughout. When Leonard challenged the supposedly unbeatable "Marvellous" Marvin Hagler in 1981, Dundee had noticed that Hagler shuffled his feet before launching his punches. Made aware of that, Leonard consistently beat him to the punch with fast jabs and hooks of his own, winning the decision on points. Likewise, it was Leonard's hand speed that prompted a frustrated Roberto Duran to throw up his own famous "hands of stone" after eight rounds with the words "no mas." He was in the corner when the 45 year old George Foreman regained the heavyweight crown by knocking out a much younger and faster Michael Moorer in 1994. Dundee's explanation was simple: he had told Foreman, "I seem to remember that the Titanic was quicker than the iceberg." And there were the times when he drew rabbits out of hats, whatever the rules. When Henry Cooper, the British idol, flattened Clay, as he still was, with his famous left hook late in the fourth round of their first fight in 1963, Dundee bought time by widening a small tear in his man's gloves and bringing it to the attention of the referee. The few precious seconds gained Clay time to recover. When Ali was the decided underdog against Foreman in the "Rumble in the Jungle" in Kinshasa, Republic of Zaire, in 1974, Dundee doctored the ring ropes, the better to enable Ali to employ the "rope-a-dope" defensive posture that saw Foreman eventually punch himself out after eight rounds. All these insights and tricks of the trade could only have come from a true boxing man and that is all Angelo Dundee ever was or wanted to be. He was born Angelo Mirena, the eighth of nine children of an Italian immigrant railroad man, on August 30, 1921, in Philadelphia, a cradle of American boxing long before Sylvester Stallone was Rocky (whose own trainer was a clone of Dundee.) In the Army during the second world war, he was a "bucket man" during fights on military bases and ended up working at the famous Stillman's Gym in Miami. About that time, he and his brother, Chris, both changed their last names to Dundee, after another brother, Joe, started fighting professionally as Johnny Dundee, itself a homage to a bygone featherweight. In the early 1950s, Angelo, as trainer, and Chris, as promoter, started the Fifth Street Gym in Miami, which remained his base for the rest of his life. But he readily answered the call to Louisville late in 1960 to take charge of the young man who had so vividly won an Olympic gold medal that year. As Mike Costello, the BBC boxing commentator, put it, "Dundee was brought in as boxing's version of the Horse Whisperer." His wife, Helen, died in 2010 and he is survived by a son and a daughter. And, of course, by Ali, at whose 70th birthday party in Louisville last month the old corner man was naturally present.