After watching the undefeated Rocky Marciano on TV a young Muhammad Ali went to
the great trainer Angelo Dundee and said he wanted to be the best boxer he
could be. <br/><br/>"Ok, start with 10 rounds of 3 minutes followed by 30
seconds rest of jump-rope. After that do 6 rounds of heavy bag work
concentrating on keeping your left hand up after throwing the jab. Next we'll
focus on your footwork. If that's good we'll work on some combinations on the
focus mitts. After a few months of doing this every day we'll do some light
sparring work with the more experienced boxers. When you can handle that we'll
do some harder sparring but with the 16oz gloves. 6 or so months after that,
we'll put you in your first amateur fight. After about 40-50 fights we'll see
if you can have your first professional fight. How does that
sound?"<br/><br/>The young Ali (or Clay, as he was known then) replied cockily,
"I'm already The Greatest! I don't need training. That's not
real fighting! I can get in the ring and beat anyone and become World Champion
right now!"<br/><br/>So being the compassionate trainer that he was, Dundee put
the brash Ali in the ring with the oldest, fattest, slowest, least-skilled
boxer in the gym. Within one painful minute a bruised and gasping Ali, with his
ego between his legs, said, "Boss, where's that jump
rope?"<br/><br/>Mike<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPhone
