Doctor of Sweet Science

Now 82 years old, Tampa native Ferdie Pacheco has spent his life pursuing a half-dozen careers: pharmacist, physician, painter, writer, poet, actor, and TV talking head. But there’s a reason he’s nicknamed “the Fight Doctor”: Pacheco will always be most famous for his time at Chris and Angelo Dundee’s 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach and his 17-year stint as a corner man for Muhammad Ali in the ’60s and ’70s.

This Tuesday at 8 p.m., the Fight Doctor will drop by Books & Books to read from his newly published chronicle of that classic period, Tales From the 5th Street Gym: Ali, the Dundees, and Miami’s Golden Age of Boxing. The book traces the full 40-year history of a prizefighting mecca, from the 5th Street Gym’s founding in 1950 to Pacheco’s time there with champs such as Ali, George Foreman, and Sugar Ray Leonard, to its eventual closing in 1990. It’s the story of a bygone era in boxing.

Tue., May 25, 8 p.m., 2010