Fifth Street Gym: A History of Boxing in Miami
Miami’s Fifth Street Gym is where Muhammad Ali became “The Greatest.”
Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) at Fifth Street Gym in 1961. (Flip Schulke)
New York boxing enthusiasts Chris and Angelo Dundee opened Fifth Street Gym in 1950 at Fifth Street and Washington Avenue in South Beach.
The facility came to prominence in 1960, with Rome Olympic gold medalist Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay, born 1942, Kentucky), when he signed a professional boxing contract with Louisville promoters and moved to Miami in December. He trained with Angelo Dundee, and initially stayed at an Overtown hotel, before relocating to a home in Brownsville.
The Beatles and Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) at Fifth Street Gym on February 18, 1964. (Charles Trainor for The Miami News)
In the span of a week in February 1964, Ali met The Beatles on February 18 at the Fifth Street Gym, after the band's second performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. On February 25, Ali defeated Sonny Liston at the Miami Beach Convention Center, and became the world heavyweight champion. He celebrated the win with Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke at the Hampton House.
Ali beat Liston in a rematch on May 25, 1965, as the tall, athletic, and bombastic figure captivated an increasingly global audience, from the U.S. to the continent of Africa, as a symbol of Black pride.
Muhammad Ali (as Cassius Clay) after he knocked out Sonny Liston at the Miami Beach Convention Center on May 25, 1965. (Neil Leifer)
By 1967, Fifth Street Gym became a hangout for celebrities like Frank Sinatra, who shot an opening scene for his Miami crime caper, “Tony Rome,” at the venue. In April, after Ali successfully defended his title against Ernie Terrell at the Astrodome in Houston, he was drafted to the Vietnam War.
Ali declined enlistment by declaring, "No Viet Cong ever call me a nigger." His declaration, amid civil rights protests and the Summer of Love, especially resonated with disillusioned Black youth. The decision to decline enlistment resulted in him being stripped of his boxing titles.
While Ali was banned from boxing and appealed a conviction for draft evasion, he toured U.S. colleges and universities as a paid speaker, and became a counterculture icon.
Muhammad Ali on the April 1968 cover of Esquire. (Carl Fischer)
In April 1968, Ali posed as the martyr St. Sebastian, sacrificing his career for activism, on the cover of Esquire magazine. The magazine hit newsstands as MLK was martyred in Memphis, and Otis Redding’s posthumous hit, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” topped the Billboard Hot 100, months after he died in a plane crash.
Ali was banned from boxing, until his March 8, 1971 comeback versus Joe Frazier, that he lost at Madison Square Garden. Shortly after the Frazier fight, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously recognized Ali’s conscientious objector status to the Vietnam War. The court decision allowed for Ali’s boxing reinstatement. He moved his training to Deer Lake, Pennsylvania in 1972.
Excerpt from the 2008 WLRN documentary “Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami.”
Muhammad Ali continued training with Angelo Dundee, and beat Frazier in their final October 1, 1975 matchup, the “Thrilla in Manila,” in the Phillippines. Ali retired from boxing in 1981.
The original Fifth Street Gym was demolished in 1993. Chris Dundee died in 1998, Angelo Dundee in 2012, and Ali in 2016.
Other champions trained at Fifth Street Gym, like Carmen Basilio, Willie Pastrano and Sugar Ray Leonard. But its lore, as the “University of Boxing,” started in 1960, when an 18-year-old Cassius Clay moved to Miami, and became Muhammad Ali: “The Greatest.”















