TO understand Drew Bundini Brown’s approach to motivation, one must first come to understand his views on spirituality. Bundini believed that truly great fighters were chosen by God, rather than cultivated by truly great trainers.
“Working with these champions, I know
they are born, not made in a gym. If you could make ’em in a gym, they’d turn
’em out like a bakery turns out cookies,” Bundini once said. “Sugar Ray was a
true champ, like [Cassius Clay] is a true champ. They don’t need no teaching.
Worst thing for a fighter is to be trained by a fighter. An ex-fighter tries to
make the fighter like the old fighter was. I couldn’t teach the champ to
deliver a blow. No man could do that. But I can talk to him about other
things.”
Considering this philosophy, it is next to impossible to imagine Angelo Dundee felt no trepidation whatsoever when asked to coexist with the new addition to Clay’s corner. By most accounts, Dundee was a relatively mild-mannered, x’s-and-o’s-style boxing trainer. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Dundee reflected on the day he found out that Bundini was joining the team: “I met [Bundini] just before our Doug Jones fight. He was talking about the planets. Like to drive me up the wall. While we were getting ready for our first fight with Liston, the Champ says, ‘Angelo, guess who’s coming down?’ I said, ‘Oh no, don’t tell me!’ But there’s no friction between Bundini and me. There’s no crossing of roles. I like him. The trick is, if you try to understand him, he’ll drive you crazy. So I don’t try.”
While Dundee now had competition for
Clay’s ear space, he quickly recognized that Bundini could bring out the best
in Clay with respect to energy and effort. Dundee was smart enough to recognize
that whatever was good for Clay was good for business. To appease the future
champion, he and Bundini would quickly learn to coexist. The degree to which
Dundee and Bundini were able to do so has been the subject of much speculation.
“The funny thing was the war of space.
The two of them would basically race up the ring steps. Dad wanted the stool in
there immediately,” Jim Dundee, Angelo’s son, said to me. “He wanted to be up
there first. Drew loved Muhammad so he wanted to be up there first. It was a
race. Dad would always laugh about it. He genuinely loved Drew. I can promise
you that. My dad always confided in me, throughout life, and I don’t remember
him ever being mad at Drew. Sure, there were times when Dad didn’t like the
crying. Dad wasn’t emotional and Drew would cry at the drop of a hat. But, let
me tell you this, they became good friends. Drew took Dad to the Cotton Club
one time. He was so excited that Drew did that. Going to Harlem, back in those
days, was the most incredible thing to my dad.”
By Angelo’s son’s estimation, Bundini
gave Ali something that his own father, despite all of his experience working
with fighters such as Carmen Basilio and Willie Pastrano, could not. Dundee’s
job was to cultivate Clay’s boxing IQ; heart, determination, and spiritual
strength became Bundini’s territory.
“Listen, Dad was fairly emotionless,”
Jim Dundee told me. “When it came to work, Dad, at that point, worked very
quietly in the corner, with a few exceptions. Muhammad loved Drew’s emotion. My
dad got a kick out of it too. I remember them all sitting around together,
Muhammad and Drew, doing the rhymes. My dad would jump in and give it a try as
well.”
Each day began with Bundini waking the
challenger for early morning roadwork, a process he referred to as “getting the
gas” (filling up one’s metaphorical gas tank). For Bundini, the day was won or
lost by the manner in which a fighter woke up, showed up, and paid attention. A
successful day of training was based on a fighter’s ability to take
responsibility of his actions and be in tune with his emotions. This component
of Bundini philosophy was dubbed “the circle theory.” He firmly believed in a
what-goes-around-comes-around approach to preparing one’s mind and body to do
battle. The work had to be done because Shorty, the proprietor of one’s
natural gifts, was watching. “Shorty is watching,” Bundini would shout. Every
sit-up had to be conducted with complete focus. Each stroke of the speed bag
had to be as important as the last. Bundini’s motivational approach could be
defined as the gospel of total awareness. Feeling, an idea closely
linked to the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, was Bundini’s end goal.
“Plug in your television. Thirteen
channels are here in this room, but you can’t see ’em unless you are plugged in.
On the radio, 150 stations are coming in, but you can’t hear ’em unless you
turn it on,” Bundini once preached, highlighting the importance of
acknowledging and embracing feeling, especially fear.
“A blind man live, a deaf and dumb man
live, but when you lose your feelings you’re dead,” Bundini told the young
Cassius Clay.
For Bundini, fear was fuel. It could
be used as a weapon to propel humans beyond their limitations. During sparring
sessions, one of Bundini’s key phrases was “Be free, Champ.” To accept pain,
fatigue, and fear was to be free. The ability to think clearly in uncomfortable
spaces made a great fighter that much greater, Bundini figured. Be it hitting
the heavy bag or skipping rope, he preached the gospel of freedom, absolute
focus, the process of embracing the pain, holding it closely, acknowledging its
power, and accepting it.
“You gotta get up and get the gas,”
Bundini would say each morning.
“Be free, Champ . . . ain’t nothing
better than free,” he would shout as he leaned over the ropes during sparring sessions.
While Clay and his new trainer were
bound by their gift of gab and poetic sensibilities, the two were, in many ways,
an odd couple. Clay, at this point in his life, was still shy around women.
Bundini was Clay’s polar opposite in this regard. While Clay lived a completely
clean life in regard to drugs and alcohol, Bundini was known as a heavy drinker
and a recreational marijuana user. The primary difference between the two, however,
centered on their views regarding race and religion. At the time, Clay was
fully enamored with the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, leader of
the Nation of Islam. All but an official member of the organization, Clay, at
first, was advised by his handlers to temporarily conceal his religious
beliefs, in fear that proclaiming his support for the Nation of Islam would
tank his chances at being granted a title shot. A converted Jew, but only in
the loose sense of the term, Bundini had learned a thing or two about the
teachings of Elijah Muhammad during his time in Harlem. To put it mildly,
Bundini was not a fan. By all accounts, he did not coddle his new boss in this
regard. He was aware that Elijah Muhammad was teaching that the “White Man” was
the devil, a message that touched a nerve with Bundini because of the
bicultural makeup of his own son.
“That mean my son is half devil?” he
would ponder to Clay.
Bundini was aware that Clay had
instantly taken a liking to his son.
Thus, Drew III would serve as
Bundini’s primary evidence in his repeated attempts to debunk the teachings of
Elijah Muhammad.
In Ali: A Life, Jonathan Eig
reminds readers of the ideological disparities between Clay and Bundini: “The
men seemed mismatched in many ways . . . [Bundini] talked about a God who
encompassed all religions, and he described race as a misguided human concept,
not a heavenly or natural one. . . . Brown challenged Clay like no one else,
telling him Elijah Muhammad was wrong, that white people were not devils, that God
didn’t care a thing about a person’s color.”
As the training camp progressed,
Bundini relayed his philosophies on both boxing and life to the young contender.
Clay did not accept all of Bundini’s viewpoints with open arms. When the
subject turned to the topic of race, arguments often ensued, neither man giving
a rhetorical inch.
“When you can appreciate a human being
and respect him for his good and try to help him for his wrongness, you’ve
found God’s law,” Bundini lectured.
The two would argue, laugh, and often
argue some more.
“Trouble is, people become robots,
mechanical, puppets. But that’s not the real thing,” Bundini preached. “Life ain’t
for robots. Life is a feeling,” he would argue.
Despite their differing worldviews, a
strong bond quickly formed. Clay was attracted to Bundini’s street vocabulary,
his verbal gymnastics, inspired by the idea of an omnipresent God from which
human beings can gain strength.
Aside from the motivational speeches
and religious debates, “Brown served another, more specific role in the Clay
camp: he helped boost and improve the boxer’s poetic output, which to that
point had been confined to short lyrics ending in the numbers one through ten,”
Jonathan Eig writes.
Early into their time together, the
two began rehearsing the “butterfly” routine that would soon become famous. One
week before the fight, CBS sports broadcaster Bob Halloran and a group of local
and national media visited the 5th Street Gym to profile the loquacious
underdog’s training camp, providing the duo with the perfect opportunity to
unveil their new battle cry to the sports world. When the camera crews arrived,
Clay’s notorious bravado, inspired by professional wrestler Gorgeous George, was
on full display. Visibly amused by Clay’s antics but still searching for actual
sports content, Halloran made several unsuccessful attempts at steering the
interview back to the subject of boxing.
“You’re going around saying you’re not going to reveal your strategy. . . can’t you tell us a little bit about what you’re going to do in the fight?” Halloran pleaded, attempting to divert the conversation away from the topic of Clay’s greatness.
To this question, the young Clay rose
to his feet as if Halloran had given him the cue he had been waiting for.
“You know how great I am. I don’t have
to tell you about my strategy. I’ll let my trainer tell you . . . Bo-dini, come
here,” Clay called, motioning Drew Bundini Brown into the camera shot.
Dressed in a nylon mesh polo shirt and
matching cap, a towel draped over his shoulder, Bundini stepped into the American
spotlight.
“Bo-dini,” Clay shouted, “Tell ’em
what we are gonna do.”
In perfect rhythmic timing, Bundini
launched into the routine that would make him famous the world over.
“We’re gonna float like a butterfly
and sting like a bee,” Bundini called, followed by a collective “Ahhhhh . . . Ahhhhh,
Rumble, young man, rumble.”
“That’s what we’re gonna do, you heard it, that’s my trainer, he’ll tell ya,” Clay insisted. The performance, which would be picked up by newspapers and sports broadcasts around the country, foreshadowed a new chapter in boxing history. The theatrics of professional sports would never be the same.
This is an extract from Todd Snyder’s new book Bundini: Don’t Believe the Hype, published 27th August 2020, Hamilcar Publications, £21.99, available here: https://hamilcarpubs.com/books/bundini-dont-believe-the-hype/