“This portrait of a young Ali is a homage to his early days at boxing’s legendary trainer Angelo Dundee’s famous 5th Street Gym Miami Beach, FL. Fresh from his gold medal Olympic win in Rome an 18 year old Cassius Clay would enter the 5th street gym in 1960 and forever change the facility and rock the boxing world itself. It was this sweaty musty Miami gym where Clay would transform himself into the renowned beloved champ Muhammad Ali. The 5th street Gym would become an epicenter of boxing elites and luminaries because of Ali’s training schedule their with Angelo Dundee. The hot facility would be packed as people lined up to sit in on his entertaining matches with sparing partners in the mornings and afternoons. Reporters and celebrities would be a constant element in the gym as Ali trained, danced and verbally entertained those who simply could not get enough of the young champ. Celebrities including Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Jackie Gleason, Malcolm X, The Beatles, Sean Connery, Frank Sinatra, Sylvester Stallone, and a myriad of others were absorbed into the gym’s legendary mystique. The legendary gym would be everything boxing aficionados, historians and enthusiasts romanticized about in regards to old dingy smelly gyms and athletes who carved themselves into champions.”
– Jules Arthur, Artist
