biography of boxer muhammad ali

Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali was a three-time heavyweight boxing champion with an impressive 56-win record. He was also known for his public stance against the Vietnam War.

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Muhammad Ali was a boxer, philanthropist, and social activist who is universally regarded as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. Ali became an Olympic gold medalist in 1960 and the world heavyweight boxing champion in 1964. Following his suspension for refusing military service in the Vietnam War, Ali reclaimed the heavyweight title two more times during the 1970s, winning famed bouts against Joe Frazier and George Foreman along the way. Ali retired from boxing in 1981 and devoted much of his time after to philanthropy. He earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.

FULL NAME: Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. BORN: January 17, 1942 DIED: June 3, 2016 BIRTHPLACE: Louisville, Kentucky SPOUSES: Sonji Roi (1964-1965), Belinda Boyd (1967-1977), Veronica Porché (1977-1986), and Yolanda Williams (1986-2016) CHILDREN: Maryum, Jamillah, Rasheda, Muhammad Jr., Miya, Khaliah, Hana, Laila Ali , and Asaad ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn

Muhammad Ali was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. His birth name was Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.

At an early age, young Clay showed that he wasn’t afraid of any bout—inside or outside of the ring. Growing up in the segregated South, he experienced racial prejudice and discrimination firsthand.

At the age of 12, Clay discovered his talent for boxing through an odd twist of fate. After his bike was stolen, Clay told police officer Joe Martin that he wanted to beat up the thief. “Well, you better learn how to fight before you start challenging people,” Martin reportedly told him at the time. In addition to being a police officer, Martin also trained young boxers at a local gym.

Clay started working with Martin to learn how to spar and soon began his boxing career. In his first amateur bout in 1954, he won the fight by split decision. Clay went on to win the 1956 Golden Gloves tournament for novices in the light heavyweight class. Three years later, he won the National Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions, as well as the Amateur Athletic Union’s national title for the light heavyweight division.

Clay attended mostly Black public schools, including Central High School in Louisville from 1956 to 1960. Clay often daydreamed in class and shadowboxed in the halls—he was training for the 1960 Olympics at the time—and his grades were so bad that some of his teachers wanted to hold him back from graduation. However, the school’s principal Atwood Wilson could see Clay’s potential and opposed this, sarcastically asking the staff, “Do you think I’m going to be the principal of a school that Cassius Clay didn’t finish?”

In 1960, Clay won a spot on the U.S. Olympic boxing team and traveled to Rome to compete. At 6 feet, 3 inches tall, Clay was an imposing figure in the ring, but he also became known for his lightning speed and fancy footwork. After winning his first three bouts, Clay defeated Zbigniew Pietrzkowski of Poland to win the light heavyweight Olympic gold medal.

After his Olympic victory, Clay was heralded as an American hero. He soon turned professional with the backing of the Louisville Sponsoring Group and continued overwhelming all opponents in the ring.

Clay met charismatic Nation of Islam minister Malcolm X at a rally in Detroit in June 1962. Floored by Malcolm X’s fearlessness as an orator, the two developed a friendship and Clay became more involved in the Black Muslim group. Malcolm X even assigned an associate to help manage Clay’s day-to-day affairs.

In 1964, Malcolm X brought his family to visit Clay while he trained in Florida for his February 25 title fight against Sonny Liston . Clay’s victory over Liston earned him his first world heavyweight boxing championship. Following the win, the two held an evening of reflection in a hotel room with Jim Brown and Sam Cooke that became the inspiration for the One Night in Miami stage play and 2020 drama film.

The next morning, on February 26, Clay announced his affiliation with the Nation of Islam. At first, he called himself Cassius X before settling on the name Muhammad Ali. Surprisingly, his allegiances were with supreme leader Elijah Muhammad and not the exiled Malcolm X. Ali and Malcolm’s friendship quickly fractured, and the two went their separate ways by that spring.

Ali showed little remorse upon Malcolm X’s murder on February 21, 1965, but admitted in his 2005 memoir Soul of a Butterfly : “Turning my back on Malcolm was one of the mistakes that I regret most in my life.”

The boxer eventually converted to orthodox Islam during the 1970s.

Ali started a different kind of fight with his outspoken views against the Vietnam War. Drafted into the military in April 1967, he refused to serve on the grounds that he was a practicing Muslim minister with religious beliefs that prevented him from fighting. He was arrested for committing a felony and almost immediately stripped of his world title and boxing license.

The U.S. Justice Department pursued a legal case against Ali and denied his claim for conscientious objector status. He was found guilty of violating Selective Service laws and sentenced to five years in prison in June 1967 but remained free while appealing his conviction.

Unable to compete professionally in the meantime, Ali missed more than three prime years of his athletic career. Following his suspension, Ali found refuge on Chicago’s South Side, where he lived from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s. He continued training, formed amateur boxing leagues, and fought whomever he could in local gyms.

Finally granted a license to fight in 1970 in Georgia, which did not have a statewide athletic commission, Ali returned to the ring at Atlanta’s City Auditorium on October 26 with a win over Jerry Quarry. A few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in June 1971, allowing Ali to fight on a regular basis.

Ali had a career record of 56 wins, five losses, and 37 knockouts before his retirement in 1981 at the age of 39.

Often referring to himself as “The Greatest,” Ali was not afraid to sing his own praises. He was known for boasting about his skills before a fight and for his colorful descriptions and phrases. In one of his more famously quoted descriptions, Ali told reporters that he could “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” in the boxing ring.

A few of his more well-known bouts include the following:

Sonny Liston

After winning gold at the 1960 Olympics, Ali took out British heavyweight champion Henry Cooper in 1963. He then knocked out Sonny Liston on February 25, 1964, to become the heavyweight champion of the world.

Joe Frazier

On March 8, 1971, Ali took on Joe Frazier in what has been called the “Fight of the Century.” Frazier and Ali went toe-to-toe for 14 rounds before Frazier dropped Ali with a vicious left hook in the 15th. Ali recovered quickly, but the judges awarded the decision to Frazier, handing Ali his first professional loss after 31 wins.

After suffering a loss to Ken Norton, Ali beat Frazier in a rematch on January 28, 1974.

In 1975, Ali and Frazier locked horns again for their grudge match on October 1 in Quezon City, Philippines. Dubbed the “Thrilla in Manila,” the bout nearly went the distance, with both men delivering and absorbing tremendous punishment. However, Frazier’s trainer threw in the towel after the 14th round, giving the hard-fought victory to Ali.

George Foreman

Another legendary Ali fight took place on October 30, 1974, against undefeated heavyweight champion George Foreman . Billed as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” the bout was organized by promoter Don King and held in Kinshasa, Zaire.

For once, Ali was seen as the underdog to the younger, massive Foreman, but he silenced his critics with a masterful performance. He baited Foreman into throwing wild punches with his “rope-a-dope” technique, before stunning his opponent with an eighth-round knockout to reclaim the heavyweight title.

Leon Spinks

After losing his title to Leon Spinks on February 15, 1978, Ali defeated him months later in a rematch on September 15. Ali became the first boxer to win the heavyweight championship three times.

Larry Holmes

Following a brief retirement, Ali returned to the ring to face Larry Holmes on October 2, 1980, but was overmatched against the younger champion.

Following one final loss in 1981, to Trevor Berbick, the boxing great retired from the sport at age 39.

Ali was married four times and had nine children, including two children—daughters Miya and Khaliah—he fathered outside of marriage.

Ali married his first wife, Sonji Roi, in 1964. They divorced a little more than one year later when she refused to adopt the Nation of Islam dress and customs.

Ali married his second wife, 17-year-old Belinda Boyd, in 1967. Boyd and Ali had four children together: Maryum, born in 1969; Jamillah and Rasheda, both born in 1970; and Muhammad Ali Jr., born in 1972. Boyd and Ali’s divorce was finalized in 1977.

At the same time Ali was married to Boyd, he traveled openly with Veronica Porché, who became his third wife in 1977. The pair had two daughters together, Hana and Laila Ali . The latter followed in Ali’s footsteps by becoming a champion boxer. Porché and Ali divorced in 1986.

Ali married his fourth and final wife Yolanda, who went by Lonnie, in 1986. The pair had known each other since Lonnie was just 6 and Ali was 21; their mothers were best friends and raised their families on the same street. Ali and Lonnie had one son together, Asaad, and remained married until Ali’s death.

Grandchildren

Rasheda’s son Nico Walsh Ali became a boxer like his grandfather and aunt. In 2021, he signed a deal with legendary Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, who promoted 27 of Muhammad Ali’s bouts. He won his first eight professional fights, according to database BoxRec.

Nico’s brother, Biaggio Ali Walsh, was a star football running back, helping lead national powerhouse Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas to the top of the USA Today rankings from 2014 through 2016. He played collegiately at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas before becoming an amateur mixed martial artist.

The brothers have drawn the attention of social media celebrity Jake Paul, a novice boxer who has said he’d like to fight both and “erase” them.

One of Ali’s other grandsons, Jacob Ali-Wertheimer, competed in NCAA track and field at Harvard University and graduated in 2021.

In 1984, Ali announced that he had Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative neurological condition. Despite the progression of Parkinson’s and the onset of spinal stenosis, he remained active in public life.

Ali raised funds for the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center in Phoenix, Arizona. And he was on hand to celebrate the inauguration of the first Black president in January 2009, when Barack Obama was sworn into office.

In his retirement, Ali devoted much of his time to philanthropy. Over the years, Ali supported the Special Olympics and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, among other organizations. In 1996, he lit the Olympic cauldron at the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, an emotional moment in sports history.

Ali traveled to numerous countries, including Mexico and Morocco, to help out those in need. In 1998, he was chosen to be a United Nations Messenger of Peace because of his work in developing nations.

In 2005, Ali received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush .

Ali also received the President’s Award from the NAACP in 2009 for his public service efforts. Other recipients of the award have included include Ella Fitzgerald , Venus and Serena Williams , Kerry Washington , Spike Lee , John Legend , Rihanna , and LeBron James .

Ali opened the Muhammad Ali Center , a multicultural center with a museum dedicated to his life and legacy, in his hometown of Louisville in 2005.

“I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given,” he said. “Many fans wanted to build a museum to acknowledge my achievements. I wanted more than a building to house my memorabilia. I wanted a place that would inspire people to be the best that they could be at whatever they chose to do, and to encourage them to be respectful of one another.”

Ali lived the final decade of his live in the Phoenix suburb of Paradise Valley, Arizona.

A few years before his death, Ali underwent surgery for spinal stenosis, a condition causing the narrowing of the spine, which limited his mobility and ability to communicate. In early 2015, he battled pneumonia and was hospitalized for a severe urinary tract infection.

Ali died on June 3, 2016, in Scottsdale, Arizona, after being hospitalized for what was reportedly a respiratory issue. He was 74 years old.

Years before his passing, Ali had planned his own memorial services, saying he wanted to be “inclusive of everyone, where we give as many people an opportunity that want to pay their respects to me,” according to a family spokesman.

The three-day event, which took place in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, included an “I Am Ali” public arts festival, entertainment and educational offerings sponsored by the city, an Islamic prayer program, and a memorial service.

Prior to the memorial service, a funeral procession traveled 20 miles through Louisville, past Ali’s childhood home, his high school, the first boxing gym where he trained, and along Ali Boulevard as tens of thousands of fans tossed flowers on his hearse and cheered his name.

The champ’s memorial service was held at the KFC Yum Center arena with close to 20,000 people in attendance. Speakers included religious leaders from various faiths: Attallah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s eldest daughter; broadcaster Bryant Gumbel; former President Bill Clinton ; comedian Billy Crystal; Ali’s daughters Maryum and Rasheda; and his widow, Lonnie.

“Muhammad indicated that when the end came for him, he wanted us to use his life and his death as a teaching moment for young people, for his country, and for the world,” Lonnie said. “In effect, he wanted us to remind people who are suffering that he had seen the face of injustice—that he grew up during segregation and that during his early life he was not free to be who he wanted to be. But he never became embittered enough to quit or to engage in violence.”

Clinton spoke about how Ali found self-empowerment: “I think he decided, before he could possibly have worked it all out, and before fate and time could work their will on him, he decided he would not ever be disempowered. He decided that not his race, nor his place, the expectations of others—positive, negative, or otherwise—would strip from him the power to write his own story.”

Crystal, who was a struggling comedian when he became friends with Ali, said of the boxing legend: “Ultimately, he became a silent messenger for peace, who taught us that life is best when you build bridges between people, not walls.”

Pallbearers included Will Smith , who once portrayed Ali on film, and former heavyweight champions Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis. Ali is buried at the Cave Hill National Cemetery in Louisville.

Ali’s stature as a legend continues to grow even after his death. He is celebrated not only for his remarkable athletic skills but for his willingness to speak his mind and his courage to challenge the status quo.

Ali played himself in the 1977 film The Greatest , which explored parts of his life such as his rise to boxing fame, conversion to Islam, and refusal to serve in Vietnam.

The 1996 documentary When We Were Kings explores Ali’s training process for his 1974 fight against George Foreman and the African political climate at the time. Directed by Leon Gast, the film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Actor Will Smith played Ali in the biopic film Ali, released in 2001. For the performance, Smith received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

Ali’s relationship with Malcolm X is explored in the fictionalized 2020 drama One Night in Miami and the 2021 documentary Blood Brothers: Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali .

• The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
• It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.
• I’m gonna float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can’t hit what the eyes can’t see.
• I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given.
• I’m the champion of the world. I’m the greatest thing that ever lived. I’m so great I don’t have a mark on my face. I shook up the world! I shook up the world!
• If Clay says a mosquito can pull a plow, don’t ask how—Hitch him up!
• You get the impression while watching him fight that he plays cat and mouse, then turns out the light.
• The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people, or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom, and equality.
• Religions all have different names, but they all contain the same truths. I think the people of our religion should be tolerant and understand people believe different things.
• It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
• I set out on a journey of love, seeking truth, peace, and understanding. l am still learning.
• Truly great people in history never wanted to be great for themselves.
• At night when I go to bed, I ask myself, “If I don’t wake up tomorrow, would I be proud of how I lived today?”
• This is the story about a man with iron fists and a beautiful tan.

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Muhammad Ali

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 27, 2024 | Original: December 16, 2009

Muhammad Ali (1942-2016) was an American former heavyweight champion boxer and one of the greatest sporting figures of the 20th century. An Olympic gold medalist and the first fighter to capture the heavyweight title three times, Ali won 56 times in his 21-year professional career. Ali’s outspokenness on issues of race, religion and politics made him a controversial figure during his career, and the heavyweight’s quips and taunts were as quick as his fists.

Born Cassius Clay Jr., Ali changed his name in 1964 after joining the Nation of Islam. Citing his religious beliefs, he refused military induction and was stripped of his heavyweight championship and banned from boxing for three years during the prime of his career. Parkinson’s syndrome severely impaired Ali’s motor skills and speech, but he remained active as a humanitarian and goodwill ambassador.

Muhammad Ali’s Early Years and Amateur Career

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., the elder son of Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr. (1912-1990) and Odessa Grady Clay (1917-1994), was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky . It was a red-and-white Schwinn that steered the future heavyweight champion to the sport of boxing. When his beloved bicycle was stolen, a tearful 12-year-old Clay reported the theft to Louisville police officer Joe Martin (1916-1996) and vowed to pummel the culprit. Martin, who was also a boxing trainer, suggested that the upset youngster first learn how to fight, and he took Clay under his wing. Six weeks later, Clay won his first bout in a split decision.

Did you know? Muhammad Ali has appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated 38 times, second only to basketball great Michael Jordan.

By age 18 Clay had captured two national Golden Gloves titles, two Amateur Athletic Union national titles and 100 victories against eight losses. After graduating high school, he traveled to Rome and won the light heavyweight gold medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics.

Clay won his professional boxing debut on October 29, 1960, in a six-round decision. From the start of his pro career, the 6-foot-3-inch heavyweight overwhelmed his opponents with a combination of quick, powerful jabs and foot speed, and his constant braggadocio and self-promotion earned him the nickname “Louisville Lip.”

Muhammad Ali: Heavyweight Champion of the World

After winning his first 19 fights, including 15 knockouts, Clay received his first title shot on February 25, 1964, against reigning heavyweight champion Sonny Liston (1932-1970). Although he arrived in Miami Beach, Florida, a 7-1 underdog, the 22-year-old Clay relentlessly taunted Liston before the fight, promising to “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” and predicting a knockout. When Liston failed to answer the bell at the start of the seventh round, Clay was indeed crowned heavyweight champion of the world. In the ring after the fight, the new champ roared, “I am the greatest!”

At a press conference the next morning, Clay, who had been seen around Miami with controversial Nation of Islam member Malcolm X (1925-1965), confirmed the rumors of his conversion to Islam. On March 6, 1964, Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) bestowed on Clay the name of Muhammad Ali.

Ali solidified his hold on the heavyweight championship by knocking out Liston in the first round of their rematch on May 25, 1965, and he defended his title eight more times. Then, with the Vietnam War raging, Ali showed up for his scheduled induction into the U.S. Armed Forces on April 28, 1967. Citing his religious beliefs, he refused to serve. Ali was arrested, and the New York State Athletic Commission immediately suspended his boxing license and revoked his heavyweight belt.

Convicted of draft evasion, Ali was sentenced to the maximum of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, but he remained free while the conviction was appealed. Many saw Ali as a draft dodger, and his popularity plummeted. Banned from boxing for three years, Ali spoke out against the Vietnam War on college campuses. As public attitudes turned against the war, support for Ali grew. In 1970 the New York State Supreme Court ordered his boxing license reinstated, and the following year the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in a unanimous decision.

Muhammad Ali’s Return to the Ring

After 43 months in exile, Ali returned to the ring on October 26, 1970, and knocked out Jerry Quarry (1945-1999) in the third round. On March 8, 1971, Ali got his chance to regain his heavyweight crown against reigning champ Joe Frazier (1944-2011) in what was billed as the “Fight of the Century.” The undefeated Frazier floored Ali with a hard left hook in the final round. Ali got up but lost in a unanimous decision, experiencing his first defeat as a pro.

Ali won his next 10 bouts before being defeated by Ken Norton (1943-). He won the rematch six months later in a split decision and gained further revenge in a unanimous decision over Frazier in a non-title rematch. The victory gave the 32-year-old Ali a title shot against 25-year-old champion George Foreman (1949-). The October 30, 1974, fight in Kinshasa, Zaire, was dubbed the “Rumble in the Jungle.” Ali, the decided underdog, employed his “rope-a-dope” strategy, leaning on the ring ropes and absorbing a barrage of blows from Foreman while waiting for his opponent to tire. The strategy worked, and Ali won in an eighth-round knockout to regain the title stripped from him seven years prior.

Ali successfully defended his title in 10 fights, including the memorable “Thrilla in Manila” on October 1, 1975, in which his bitter rival Frazier, his eyes swollen shut, was unable to answer the bell for the final round. Ali also defeated Norton in their third meeting in a unanimous 15-round decision.

On February 15, 1978, an aging Ali lost his title to Leon Spinks (1953-) in a 15-round split decision. Seven months later, Ali defeated Spinks in a unanimous 15-round decision to reclaim the heavyweight crown and become the first fighter to win the world heavyweight boxing title three times.

After announcing his retirement in 1979, Ali launched a brief, unsuccessful comeback. However, he was overwhelmed in a technical knockout loss to Larry Holmes (1949-) in 1980, and he dropped a unanimous 10-round decision to Trevor Berbick (1954-2006) on December 11, 1981. After the fight, the 39-year-old Ali retired for good with a career record of 56 wins, five losses and 37 knockouts.

Muhammad Ali’s Later Years and Legacy

In 1984 Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s syndrome, possibly connected to the severe head trauma suffered during his boxing career. The former champion’s motor skills slowly declined, and his movement and speech were limited. In spite of the Parkinson’s, Ali remained in the public spotlight, traveling the world to make humanitarian, goodwill and charitable appearances. He met with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (1937-2006) in 1990 to negotiate the release of American hostages, and in 2002 he traveled to Afghanistan as a United Nations Messenger of Peace.

Ali had the honor of lighting the cauldron during the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. In 1999 Ali was voted the BBC’s “Sporting Personality of the Century,” and Sports Illustrated named him “Sportsman of the Century.” Ali was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a 2005 White House ceremony, and in the same year the $60 million Muhammad Ali Center, a nonprofit museum and cultural center focusing on peace and social responsibility, opened in Louisville.

Ring Magazine named Ali “Fighter of the Year” five times, more than any other boxer, and he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. Ali has been married four times and has seven daughters and two sons. He married his fourth wife, Yolanda, in 1986. Ali died at the age of 74 on June 3, 2016.

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Biography Online

Muhammad Ali Biography

“I’m not the greatest; I’m the double greatest. Not only do I knock ’em out, I pick the round. “

– Muhammad Ali

Ali was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1942. He was named after his father, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Sr., (who was named after the 19th-century abolitionist and politician Cassius Clay). Ali would later change his name after joining the Nation of Islam. He subsequently converted to Sunni Islam in 1975.

Early boxing career

Standing at 6’3″ (1.91 m), Ali had a highly unorthodox style for a heavyweight boxer. Rather than the normal boxing style of carrying the hands high to defend the face, he instead relied on his quick feet and ability to avoid a punch. In Louisville, October 29, 1960, Cassius Clay won his first professional fight. He won a six-round decision over Tunney Hunsaker, who was the police chief of Fayetteville, West Virginia. From 1960 to 1963, the young fighter amassed a record of 19-0, with 15 knockouts. He defeated such boxers as Tony Esperti, Jim Robinson, Donnie Fleeman, Alonzo Johnson, George Logan, Willi Besmanoff, Lamar Clark (who had won his previous 40 bouts by knockout), Doug Jones, and Henry Cooper. Among Clay’s victories were versus Sonny Banks (who knocked him down during the bout), Alejandro Lavorante, and the aged Archie Moore (a boxing legend who had fought over 200 previous fights, and who had been Clay’s trainer prior to Angelo Dundee).

Despite these close calls against Doug Jones and Henry Cooper, he became the top contender for Sonny Liston’s title. In spite of Clay’s impressive record, he was not expected to beat the champion. The fight was to be held on February 25, 1964, in Miami, Florida. During the weigh-in before the fight, Ali frequently taunted Liston. Ali dubbed him “the big ugly bear”, and declared that he would “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” Ali was ready to dance around the ring, as he said, “Your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see.”

This was a typical buildup for Ali, who increasingly enjoyed playing to the crowd and creating a buzz before a fight. It was good news for fight promoters, who saw increased interest in any fight involving the bashful Ali.

Vietnam War

In 1964, Ali failed the Armed Forces qualifying test because his writing and spelling skills were inadequate. However, in early 1966, the tests were revised and Ali was reclassified 1A. He refused to serve in the United States Army during the Vietnam War as a conscientious objector, because “War is against the teachings of the Holy Koran. I’m not trying to dodge the draft. We are not supposed to take part in no wars unless declared by Allah or The Messenger. We don’t take part in Christian wars or wars of any unbelievers.” Ali also famously said,

Ali also famously said,

“I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong” and “no Vietcong ever called me nigger.”

Ali refused to respond to his name being read out as Cassius Clay, stating, as instructed by his mentors from the Nation of Islam, that Clay was the name given to his slave ancestors by the white man.

“Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn’t choose it and I don’t want it. I am Muhammad Ali, a free name – it means beloved of God – and I insist people use it when people speak to me and of me.”

By refusing to respond to this name, Ali’s personal life was filled with controversy. Ali was essentially banned from fighting in the United States and forced to accept bouts abroad for most of 1966.

From his rematch with Liston in May 1965, to his final defence against Zora Folley in March 1967, he defended his title nine times. Few other heavyweight champions in history have fought so much in such a short period.

Ali was scheduled to fight WBA champion Ernie Terrell in a unification bout in Toronto on March 29, 1966, but Terrell backed out and Ali won a 15-round decision against substitute opponent George Chuvalo. He then went to England and defeated Henry Cooper and Brian London by stoppage on cuts. Ali’s next defence was against German southpaw Karl Mildenberger, the first German to fight for the title since Max Schmeling. In one of the tougher fights of his life, Ali stopped his opponent in round 12.

Ali returned to the United States in November 1966 to fight Cleveland “Big Cat” Williams in the Houston Astrodome. A year and a half before the fight, Williams had been shot in the stomach at point-blank range by a Texas policeman. As a result, Williams went into the fight missing one kidney, 10 feet of his small intestine, and with a shrivelled left leg from nerve damage from the bullet. Ali beat Williams in three rounds.

On February 6, 1967, Ali returned to a Houston boxing ring to fight Terrell in what became one of the uglier fights in boxing. Terrell had angered Ali by calling him Clay, and the champion vowed to punish him for this insult. During the fight, Ali kept shouting at his opponent, “ What’s my name, Uncle Tom … What’s my name. ” Terrell suffered 15 rounds of brutal punishment, losing 13 of 15 rounds on two judges’ scorecards, but Ali did not knock him out. Analysts, including several who spoke to ESPN on the sports channel’s “Ali Rap” special, speculated that the fight only continued because Ali chose not to end it, choosing instead to further punish Terrell. After the fight, Tex Maule wrote, “It was a wonderful demonstration of boxing skill and a barbarous display of cruelty.”

Ali’s actions in refusing military service and aligning himself with the Nation of Islam made him a lightning rod for controversy, turning the outspoken but popular former champion into one of that era’s most recognisable and controversial figures. Appearing at rallies with Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad and declaring his allegiance to him at a time when mainstream America viewed them with suspicion — if not outright hostility — made Ali a target of outrage, and suspicion as well. Ali seemed at times to even provoke such reactions, with viewpoints that wavered from support for civil rights to outright support of separatism.

Near the end of 1967, Ali was stripped of his title by the professional boxing commission and would not be allowed to fight professionally for more than three years. He was also convicted for refusing induction into the army and sentenced to five years in prison. Over the course of those years in exile, Ali fought to appeal his conviction. He stayed in the public spotlight and supported himself by giving speeches primarily at rallies on college campuses that opposed the Vietnam War.

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?”

– Muhammad Ali – explaining why he refused to fight in Vietnam

In 1970, Ali was allowed to fight again, and in late 1971 the Supreme Court reversed his conviction.

Muhammad Ali’s comeback

In 1970, Ali was finally able to get a boxing license. With the help of a State Senator, he was granted a license to box in Georgia because it was the only state in America without a boxing commission. In October 1970, he returned to stop Jerry Quarry on a cut after three rounds. Shortly after the Quarry fight, the New York State Supreme Court ruled that Ali was unjustly denied a boxing license. Once again able to fight in New York, he fought Oscar Bonavena at Madison Square Garden in December 1970. After a tough 14 rounds, Ali stopped Bonavena in the 15th, paving the way for a title fight against Joe Frazier.

The Fight of the Century

Ali and Frazier fought each other on March 8, 1971, at Madison Square Garden. The fight, known as ‘”The Fight of the Century”, was one of the most eagerly anticipated bouts of all time and remains one of the most famous. It featured two skilled, undefeated fighters, both of whom had reasonable claims to the heavyweight crown. The fight lived up to the hype, and Frazier punctuated his victory by flooring Ali with a hard left hook in the 15th and final round and won on points. Frank Sinatra — unable to acquire a ringside seat — took photos of the match for Life Magazine. Legendary boxing announcer Don Dunphy and actor and boxing aficionado Burt Lancaster called the action for the broadcast, which reached millions of people.

Frazier eventually won the fight and retained the title with a unanimous decision, dealing Ali his first professional loss. Despite an impressive performance, Ali may have still been suffering from the effects of “ring rust” due to his long layoff.

In 1973, after a string of victories over the top Heavyweight opposition in a campaign to force a rematch with Frazier, Ali split two bouts with Ken Norton (in the bout that Ali lost to Norton, Ali suffered a broken jaw).

Rumble in the Jungle

In 1974, Ali gained a match with champion George Foreman. The fight took place in Zaire (the Congo) – Ali wanted the fight to be there to help give an economic boost to this part of Africa. The pre-match hype was as great as ever.

“Floats like a butterfly, sting like a bee, his hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.”

– Muhammad Ali – before the 1974 fight against George Foreman

Against the odds, Ali won the rematch in the eighth round. Ali had adopted a strategy of wearing Foreman down though absorbing punches on the ropes – a strategy later termed – rope a dope.

This gave Ali another chance at the world title against Frazer

“It will be a killer, and a chiller, and a thriller, when I get the gorilla in Manila.”

– Ali before Frazer fight.

The fight lasted 14 rounds, with Ali finally proving victorious in the testing African heat.

Muhammad Ali in retirement

Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the early 1980s, following which his motor functions began a slow decline. Although Ali’s doctors disagreed during the 1980s and 1990s about whether his symptoms were caused by boxing and whether or not his condition was degenerative, he was ultimately diagnosed with Pugilistic Parkinson’s syndrome. By late 2005 it was reported that Ali’s condition was notably worsening. According to the documentary ‘When We Were Kings’ when Ali was asked about whether he has any regrets about boxing due to his disability, he responded that if he didn’t box he would still be a painter in Louisville, Kentucky.

Speaking of his own Parkinson’s disease, Ali remarks how it has helped him to look at life in a different perspective.

“Maybe my Parkinson’s is God’s way of reminding me what is important. It slowed me down and caused me to listen rather than talk. Actually, people pay more attention to me now because I don’t talk as much.” “I always liked to chase the girls. Parkinson’s stops all that. Now I might have a chance to go to heaven.”

Muhammad Ali, BBC

Despite the disability, he remained a beloved and active public figure. Recently he was voted into Forbes Celebrity 100 coming in at number 13 behind Donald Trump. In 1985, he served as a guest referee at the inaugural WrestleMania event. In 1987 he was selected by the California Bicentennial Foundation for the U.S. Constitution to personify the vitality of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights in various high profile activities. Ali rode on a float at the 1988 Tournament of Roses Parade, launching the U.S. Constitution’s 200th birthday commemoration. He also published an oral history, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times with Thomas Hauser, in 1991. Ali received a Spirit of America Award calling him the most recognised American in the world. In 1996, he had the honour of lighting the flame at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 1999, Ali received a special one-off award from the BBC at its annual BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award ceremony, which was the BBC Sports Personality of the Century Award. His daughter Laila Ali also became a boxer in 1999, despite her father’s earlier comments against female boxing in 1978: “Women are not made to be hit in the breast, and face like that… the body’s not made to be punched right here [patting his chest]. Get hit in the breast… hard… and all that.”

On September 13, 1999, Ali was named “Kentucky Athlete of the Century” by the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame in ceremonies at the Galt House East.

In 2001, a biographical film, entitled Ali, was made, with Will Smith starring as Ali. The film received mixed reviews, with the positives generally attributed to the acting, as Smith and supporting actor Jon Voight earned Academy Award nominations. Prior to making the Ali movie, Will Smith had continually rejected the role of Ali until Muhammad Ali personally requested that he accept the role. According to Smith, the first thing Ali said about the subject to Smith was: “You ain’t pretty enough to play me”.

He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony on November 9, 2005, and the prestigious “Otto Hahn peace medal in Gold” of the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN) in Berlin for his work with the US civil rights movement and the United Nations (December 17, 2005).

On November 19, 2005 (Ali’s 19th wedding anniversary), the $60 million non-profit Muhammad Ali Center opened in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. In addition to displaying his boxing memorabilia, the centre focuses on core themes of peace, social responsibility, respect, and personal growth.

According to the Muhammad Ali Center website in 2012,

“Since he retired from boxing, Ali has devoted himself to humanitarian endeavours around the globe. He is a devout Sunni Muslim, and travels the world over, lending his name and presence to hunger and poverty relief, supporting education efforts of all kinds, promoting adoption and encouraging people to respect and better understand one another. It is estimated that he has helped to provide more than 22 million meals to feed the hungry. Ali travels, on average, more than 200 days per year.”

Muhammad Ali died on 3 June 2016, from a respiratory illness, a condition that was complicated by Parkinson’s disease.

“Will they ever have another fighter who writes poems, predicts rounds, beats everybody, makes people laugh, makes people cry and is as tall and extra pretty as me?”

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Muhammad Ali ”, Oxford, UK – www.biographyonline.net . Last updated 3rd February 2018

Related pages

• Muhammad Ali Facts
• Muhammad Ali Quotes

Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero

Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero at Amazon

Muhammad Ali – The Whole Story

Muhammad Ali – The Whole Story at Amazon

External pages Pages

• www.ali.com – Official website
• www.maprc.com Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center (MAPC)

 Muhammad Ali The Greatest Video

Muhammad Ali

American boxer and activist (1942–2016) / from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, dear wikiwand ai, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:.

Can you list the top facts and stats about Muhammad Ali?

Summarize this article for a 10 year old

Muhammad Ali ( / ɑː ˈ l iː / ; [2] born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. ; January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer and activist. Nicknamed " the Greatest ", he is regarded as one of the most significant sports figures of the 20th century and is often regarded as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time. He held the Ring magazine heavyweight title from 1964 to 1970. He was the undisputed champion from 1974 to 1978 and the WBA and Ring heavyweight champion from 1978 to 1979. In 1999, he was named Sportsman of the Century by Sports Illustrated and the Sports Personality of the Century by the BBC .

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky , he began training as an amateur boxer at age 12. At 18, he won a gold medal in the light heavyweight division at the 1960 Summer Olympics and turned professional later that year. He converted to Islam after 1961. He won the world heavyweight championship, defeating Sonny Liston in a major upset on February 25, 1964, at age 22. During that year, he denounced his birth name as a " slave name " and formally changed his name to Muhammad Ali. In 1966, Ali refused to be drafted into the military, owing to his religious beliefs and ethical opposition to the Vietnam War , and was found guilty of draft evasion and stripped of his boxing titles. He stayed out of prison while appealing the decision to the Supreme Court , where his conviction was overturned in 1971. He did not fight for nearly four years and lost a period of peak performance as an athlete. Ali's actions as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War made him an icon for the larger counterculture of the 1960s generation, and he was a very high-profile figure of racial pride for African Americans during the civil rights movement and throughout his career. As a Muslim, Ali was initially affiliated with Elijah Muhammad 's Nation of Islam (NOI). He later disavowed the NOI, adhering to Sunni Islam .

He fought in several historic boxing matches, including his highly publicized fights with Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier (including the Fight of the Century , the biggest boxing event up until then), the Thrilla in Manila , and his fight with George Foreman in The Rumble in the Jungle . Ali thrived in the spotlight at a time when many boxers let their managers do the talking, and he became renowned for his provocative and outlandish persona. He was famous for trash-talking , often free-styled with rhyme schemes and spoken word poetry , and has been recognized as a pioneer in hip hop . He often predicted in which round he would knock out his opponent. As a boxer, Ali was known for his unorthodox movement, fancy footwork, head movement, and rope-a-dope technique, among others.

Outside boxing, Ali attained success as a spoken word artist, releasing two studio albums: I Am the Greatest! (1963) and The Adventures of Ali and His Gang vs. Mr. Tooth Decay (1976). Both albums received Grammy Award nominations. He also featured as an actor and writer, releasing two autobiographies. Ali retired from boxing in 1981 and focused on religion, philanthropy, and activism. In 1984, he made public his diagnosis of Parkinson's syndrome , which some reports attributed to boxing-related injuries, though he and his specialist physicians disputed this. He remained an active public figure globally, but in his later years made fewer public appearances as his condition worsened, and he was cared for by his family.

Culture History

Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016), born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., was an iconic American professional boxer and one of the most celebrated sports figures of the 20th century. Known for his unparalleled skills in the ring, charismatic personality, and outspoken stance on social and political issues, Ali became a three-time world heavyweight champion. Beyond his boxing achievements, he was a symbol of resilience, courage, and activism, leaving an indelible mark on both the sporting world and the broader cultural landscape.

Growing up in a racially segregated Louisville, Ali experienced the harsh realities of racial discrimination from an early age. His father, Cassius Clay Sr., was a sign painter, and his mother, Odessa Grady Clay, worked as a domestic helper. Despite the challenges of a segregated society, young Cassius showed promise as an athlete. He began boxing at the age of 12, under the guidance of police officer and boxing coach Joe Martin, who recognized his natural talent and fiery determination.

In 1960, at the age of 18, Cassius Clay won a gold medal in the light heavyweight division at the Rome Olympics. This victory marked the beginning of his rapid ascent in the boxing world. Following the Olympics, Clay turned professional and was guided by trainer Angelo Dundee. Known for his lightning-fast footwork, quick jabs, and unorthodox boxing style, he soon gained a reputation for being a force to be reckoned with in the ring.

In 1964, Cassius Clay faced the reigning heavyweight champion, Sonny Liston, in a highly anticipated bout. Clay, however, was not content with merely challenging Liston for the title; he proclaimed himself “The Greatest” and confidently predicted that he would win. True to his bold predictions, Clay defeated Liston in a stunning upset, becoming the youngest boxer to take the heavyweight title.

Shortly after this victory, Cassius Clay publicly announced his conversion to Islam and embraced the teachings of the Nation of Islam, a controversial move during a time of heightened racial tension in the United States . He changed his name to Muhammad Ali, explaining that Cassius Clay was his “slave name.” Ali’s affiliation with the Nation of Islam and his refusal to be drafted into the U.S. military during the Vietnam War sparked intense controversy and condemnation. He cited religious reasons for his refusal, famously stating, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”

The boxing authorities reacted swiftly, stripping Ali of his heavyweight title and suspending him from professional boxing. This period of exile from the sport, lasting nearly three years, took a toll on Ali’s career. Yet, it also became a defining chapter in his life, as he remained steadfast in his convictions and fought for his beliefs.

In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Ali’s conviction in a unanimous decision, recognizing his conscientious objection to the Vietnam War based on religious grounds. This legal victory paved the way for Ali’s return to the boxing ring. The iconic “Rumble in the Jungle” bout against George Foreman in 1974, held in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), became a symbol of Ali’s resilience and strategic brilliance. Foreman was considered unbeatable, but Ali employed a tactic he termed the “rope-a-dope,” allowing Foreman to exhaust himself before launching a counterattack that led to Ali regaining the heavyweight title.

Ali’s career was marked by several epic battles, including the “Thrilla in Manila” against Joe Frazier in 1975, widely regarded as one of the greatest boxing matches in history. Ali’s ability to absorb punishment, his strategic prowess, and his charismatic personality outside the ring endeared him to fans worldwide.

Beyond his achievements in boxing, Ali’s impact extended to the realm of civil rights and social justice. He used his platform to advocate for racial equality, religious freedom, and the rights of oppressed people. Ali’s charisma, wit, and outspoken nature made him a cultural icon and a symbol of resistance during a time of significant social change.

Ali’s later years were marked by the visible toll that boxing had taken on his health. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1984, a condition attributed to the repeated head trauma sustained during his boxing career. Despite the physical challenges, Ali remained active in philanthropy and humanitarian efforts. He traveled extensively, promoting peace, understanding, and humanitarian causes.

In 1996, Ali had the honor of lighting the Olympic cauldron at the Summer Games in Atlanta, a poignant moment that symbolized his enduring impact on both sports and society. His struggle with Parkinson’s disease did not diminish his spirit, and he continued to inspire countless individuals around the world.

Muhammad Ali passed away on June 3, 2016, at the age of 74. His legacy transcends the world of boxing, leaving an indelible mark on the broader cultural and social landscape. Ali’s life serves as a testament to the power of conviction, resilience, and the pursuit of justice in the face of adversity. His famous words, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” continue to resonate as a mantra of strength and determination for generations to come.

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Muhammad ali (1942–2016).

Visit of Muhammad Ali to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of History and Technology, now the National Museum of American History, March 17, 1976. During his visit he donated a pair of gloves and a robe to the museum for the “Nations of Nations” exhibition. Featured in TORCH, April 1976/Smithsonian Institution Archives. Click photo for article. (Photo by Richard K. Hofmeister)

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”–Muhammad Ali

Risk taker, sports figure and fearless social icon, Muhammad Ali, who died on June 4, is ever alive in the hearts of those who know him as the greatest boxer of the 20th century. His quotes and observations, like the one above, are legion. A quote by Shakespeare “To thine own self be true,” fits him well. The path he choose not only immortalized him to sports fans but endeared him to the general public. It was a path that led through the Smithsonian.

In 1976, the Smithsonian acquired Ali’s boxing gloves and robe for an exhibition on the American Bicentennial, “A Nation of Nations.” At the donation ceremony, before a crowd of reporters and cheering spectators, Ali predicted that his Everlast gloves would become “the most famous thing in this building.”

The Smithsonian’s Ali objects artifacts and portraits are a testament to Ali’s life. Muhammad Ali rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most famous men in the world. Ali’s complexity matched the spirit of the tumultuous 1960s. He was at once a boxing titan, a civil rights warrior, an anti-war protester, and a charismatic celebrity.

Over the years the National Portrait Gallery, the National Postal Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture have collected images and memorabilia of the boxer.

On the Portrait Gallery’s third-floor mezzanine is a 1981 painting of Ali from the museum’s permanent collection, “Cat’s Cradle,” by Henry C. Casselli, Jr.

As a tribute to the man on the day of his passing, the Portrait Gallery installed a likeness that makes a statement about Ali the man. The boxer’s image, taken by photographer Yousuf Karsh in 1970, can be found near the north entrance on the first floor.

The charismatic Ali appeared on television, in commercials, and in a film about his life, and he used his worldwide fame for humanitarian efforts as well. Much more than an outstanding boxer, the media star became a symbol of courage, independence, and determination.

A few of many Muhammad Ali-related images and items at the Smithsonian include:

• Art & Design
• History & Culture
• Science & Nature
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The life of Muhammad Ali 1942-2016

As a boxer, Ali will be remembered as a three-time world heavyweight champion who won 56 bouts over a 21-year career.

New York – Of all the tributes being paid to Muhammad Ali, few can match the praise that the former boxer heaped upon himself.

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr on January 17, 1942, in Louisville Kentucky

Aged 22, he took on heavyweight champion Sonny Liston in Miami. He won and proclaimed to the world: “I am the world’s greatest!”

Ali was the first man to win heavyweight titles three times

Ali attended his first Nation of Islam meeting in 1959 and converted to Sunni Islam in 1975

In 1967, he famously refused to fight in Vietnam, citing religious reasons

Married four times, he had seven daughters and two sons

He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1984, at the age of 43

Ali died late on June 3, 2016, in a hospital in Arizona after being admitted with respiratory problems

Ali’s funeral will take place in Louisville

Ali is survived by his wife, the former Lonnie Williams, who knew him when she was a child, along with his nine children

Ali, in his own words, was the “prettiest, the most superior, most scientific, most skilfullest fighter in the ring”.

Keep reading

‘mma brought me closer to god’: biaggio ali walsh, muhammad ali’s grandson, dutch boxing hero who fought ali still riding punches in bulgaria, the black game changers of us sport, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Elvis Presley was the 20th century’s king of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Ali was the Elvis of Boxing, he once said.

Most of the time, Ali dispensed with comparisons or complex superlatives. He was, simply, “the Greatest”.

If anybody took this self-congratulation for arrogance, Ali had an answer ready. “It’s hard to be humble when you’re as great as I am,” he said.

He died on Friday aged 74, after a decades-long struggle with Parkinson’s disease – a slowly worsening brain disorder that never wholly subdued one of the sporting world’s biggest personalities.

As a boxer, he will be remembered as a three-time world heavyweight champion who won 56 bouts over a 21-year career.

READ MORE: Muhammad Ali quotes on boxing and racism

Ali also made headlines outside the ring with critiques of racism in the US, his conversion to Islam and a refusal to fight in the Vietnam War.

He was born in the American South of 1942 and the segregation era, taking his original name, Cassius Clay, from his father, a sign and mural painter. His mother, Odessa Clay, was a housemaid.

In 1954, it was Ali’s quick tongue that got him into boxing.

The skinny 12-year-old sought out local police officer Joe Martin to report his red bicycle as stolen in his home town of Louisville, Kentucky.

Ali said he would whip the thief who had pinched his Christmas gift. Martin – who also ran a boxing gym – said Ali had better learn how to fight to come good on his threat.

Six years later, he won a gold medal in the 175-pound division at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome and launched his professional career.

Nation of Islam phase

A title fight against Sonny Liston won him fame in 1964. Ali was an underdog who became world heavyweight champion by pounding his rival to defeat in six rounds – a big upset in sports history.

Two days later, he shocked the US again by embracing the Nation of Islam – a religious group that seeks to improve life for blacks in the US, but has been criticised for black supremacist ideas.

He also dropped what he called his “slave name” and became Muhammad Ali.

Ali’s links with activist Malcolm X and his spiritual mentor, Elijah Muhammad, worried conservatives, but he was an inspiration for many.

“As a child, the first action figure my parents got me was of Muhammad Ali. For my generation, he was perhaps the largest and most influential pop culture icons for African-Americans and Muslims,” Dawud Walid, from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group, told Al Jazeera.

“In the civil rights era, he stood against the discrimination we’ve all faced in the US. He crystallised that mindset of resistance and a feeling among many Muslims not to submit to stereotypes; that being Muslim is just as American as being Christian or Jewish.”

Ali risked his career – and his reputation – to oppose the Vietnam War. Citing religious beliefs, he refused to serve in the US srmy and was subsequently arrested for committing a felony. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong,” he said.

The conflict was broadly popular in the US at that time, and Ali was stripped of his titles, had his boxing licence suspended and was found guilty of an offence at a 1967 trial. The US Supreme Court reversed the conviction four years later.

“He was ahead of the curve in calling the Vietnam War wrong and he doesn’t get enough credit for that,” Michael McPherson, director of the anti-war group, Veterans for Peace, told Al Jazeera.

“He was an African-American Muslim who criticised US foreign policy. It’s hard to do that today; but back then, black people had to prove their allegiance, patriotism and belief in America. I wish we had more people who speak out when something is wrong.”

Back in the ring in 1970, Ali continued to “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” against the likes of George Foreman and Joe Frazier.

He lost the Fight of the Century to Frazier at Madison Square Garden after 15 rounds in 1971, but beat him back four years later in the capital of the Philippines – the so-called Thrilla in Manila.

Rope-a-dope trick

Fans have questioned Ali’s style: he held his hands low and backed away from punches, rather than dodging and weaving.

His “rope-a-dope” trick of leaning back on the ropes to avoid blows helped him win a knockout victory against Foreman in a 1974 title fight – the Rumble in the Jungle – in Kinshasa, Zaire, now called the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As well as being able to take a punch, Ali fought with speed, courage and good footwork. He ranks among the greatest boxers of all time, alongside Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, Henry Armstrong and others.

He fought his final professional fight and married his fourth wife, Lonnie Williams, in the 1980s. Having left the hard-line Nation of Islam, Ali embraced the mainstream Sunni faith and remained politically active despite the onset of Parkinson’s.

Ralph Ali, Frazier & Foreman we were 1 guy. A part of me slipped away, "The greatest piece" https://t.co/xVKOc9qtub — George Foreman (@GeorgeForeman) June 4, 2016

He met Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 1990 and brokered the release of Americans who had been held hostage after the invasion of Kuwait. In 2011, he called on Iran to release the captive US hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal.

One of Ali’s most celebrated moments came in 1996, when he lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony to the Atlanta Olympics. His willingness to appear despite a visibly twitching arm touched many in the crowd.

It was a “moment of infinite sadness, yet supreme majesty”, wrote Ken Rosenthal in The Baltimore Sun. Parkinson’s disease was “proving a more difficult opponent than Joe Frazier” for the champion.

The father-of-nine’s less-frequent television appearances showed how even the cleverest and strongest men are worn down by a brain illness.

“Parkinson’s sufferers say they can still think the things they thought before they had the disease – it just takes them a lot longer,” Peter Schmidt, who heads research programmes at the National Parkinson Foundation, told Al Jazeera.

“You can imagine how hard it was for Ali, who joked around so much and for whom timing was so important. That’s why he remained such an inspiration – even though he was so seriously affected, he was always joking and continued to have such an infectious personality.”

While the sporting world has had many champions, few can match Ali for charisma and swagger.

In his own words: “I won’t miss fighting, fighting will miss me.”

Follow James Reinl on Twitter: @jamesreinl

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Muhammad Ali, 1942-2016

Muhammad Ali Dies at 74: Titan of Boxing and the 20th Century

Muhammad ali: ‘what’s my name’, the three-time world champion boxer muhammad ali has died. current and former new york times reporters and columnists talk about their memories of him and how he became an international icon..

Ali: Well, as I understand, I’m Cassius Marcellus Clay, the sixth and my great-great grandfather was a Kentucky slave when he was named after some great Kentuckian, but Cassius Marcellus Clay is a great name in Kentucky. And uh, really, where, he was from, where it was all originated, I couldn’t tell ya, but since I reached a little fame in boxing, most people want to know where I’m-a from and uh, where did I get that name. But really, I haven’t really checked on that. So, I see that I’m gonna have to go look in the books Reporter: You have to look it up Ali: See what’s it all about now I’m getting the little interviews On screen interview with reporter He was born Cassius Clay Became MUHAMMAD ALI And IS WIDELY HAILED AS ONE OF THE GREATEST And most influential ATHLETES OF THE 20TH CENTURY. The THREE TIME HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION Possessed unrivaled speed and agility inside the ring And an unmatched wit and charisma outside of it. He would come to be celebrated all over the world - A symbol of tolerance and understanding But was militant and confrontational in his youth. HIS FIRST TITLE BOUT CAME IN 1964. FEW THOUGHT HE HAD MUCH OF A CHANCE Ali dancing in the ring / Ali shooting his mouth off outside of it Ali: I predict that tonight someone will die at ringside of shock! Lipsyte: In 1964, the champion was Sonny Liston. And he was absolutely unbeatable. Cassius Clay was a 7-1 underdog - which is enormous, prohibitive odds. The New York Times sent me down there with these instructions: As soon as I got to Miami, rent a car, drive back and forth between the arena where the fight was gonna’ be held and the nearest hospital so I would waste no time following Cassius Clay into intensive care. Shot of Liston fight (KO) / BUT CLAY DOMINATED THE FIGHT: HE ELUDED LISTON’S FISTS, AND BY THE SIXTH ROUND WAS HITTING THE CHAMPION VIRTUALLY AT WILL. Shots from fight (ANNOUNCERS) WHEN LISTON DIDN’T ANSWER THE BELL FOR THE SEVENTH ROUND, CLAY BECAME THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD. (ANNOUNCER) IT WAS CLEAR FROM THE VERY BEGINNING THAT CLAY WAS GOING TO BE A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHAMPION:- BRASH, OUTSPOKEN SOON AFTER HIS VICTORY, HE JOINED THE NATION OF ISLAM AND CHANGED HIS NAME TO MUHAMMAD ALI. BUT MANY PUBLICATIONS, INCLUDING THE NEW YORK TIMES CONTINUED TO CALL HIM CASSIUS. Shots from fight Lipsyte: I said to him, ‘Listen, sorry about this, but this is out of my control.’ And he patted me on the head and said, ‘Don’t worry, you’re just a little brother of the white power structure.’ Shots of “Cassius Clay” in NYT articles SOME ASKED IF HE MIGHT OFFICIALLY CHANGE IT AS A REPORTER DID IN THIS PRESS CONFERENCE CAPTURED BY KTVU NEWS CAMERAS. Reporter: You’ve thought about changing it legally to Muhammad? Ali: Legally? Le- How’s that, who would I have to Reporters: In court, the court. (laughter) Ali: Who would I have to face? Reporter: The judge. Ali: The judge is what color? Reporter: I don’t know. Ali: He’s white. Reporters: Probably. There are negro judges. Ali: So in other words, I’d have to ask a white man, ‘May I call myself Muhammad Ali, boss?’ On screen Lipsyte: He’s very sensitive about my rightful name. And in several very cruel fights, one with Floyd Patterson, one with Ernie Terrell, he tortured them. Didn’t knock them out when he could have, because he wanted to inflict more punishment, because they insisted on calling him Cassius Clay. On screen / shots from the two fights mentioned Ali: If Floyd dreamed he beat me, he’d apologize. He’d rather run through hell in a gasoline sport coat. On screen Lipsyte: He tortured Floyd. It was like a little boy picking the wings off a butterfly. And he would just, uh, he would just kind of punch Floyd, step back Shots from fight After Patterson, Ali defeated George Chuvalo in March 1966. And then Henry Cooper in a six round TKO in May. He knocked out Brian London in only three rounds in August, beat Carl Millenberger in 12 rounds in September, and defeated Cleveland Williams in three round technical knockout in November, in what many experts consider to be the most dominant performance in Ali’s career. Four months later, In a pre-fight with Howard Cosell and ABC sports Ali almost came to blows with Ernie Terrell. Shots from fights (Ali and Terrell argue) Lipsyte: Ernie Terrell, somehow got boxed into, you know, standing up for the establishment; and that was, you know, another terrible and ugly fight. This was the, mean and cruel streak. Shots from fight Rhoden: Terrell would not call him by his name, you wanna call him Cassius. And so what, he just punished him. (bell) He was like, ‘What’s my name? Howard Cosell: He said he’d humiliate him, I hardly think it’s necessary. Don’t you agree, Joe? “Joe”: (laughs) I don’t, I don’t know about that. I think that Clay can do what he wants to do in the ring. Shots from fight FINALLY, IN MARCH 1967, ALI DEFEATED ZORA FOLLEY. He had won 29 fights in six and a half years - ONE OF THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY RUNS IN HEAVYWEIGHT BOXING HISTORY. Although he didn’t know it at the time, IT WOULD BE THREE AND A HALF YEARS BEFORE HE FOUGHT AGAIN. WHEN ALI REFUSED INDUCTION INTO THE ARMED FORCES, THE STATE BOXING COMMISSIONS SUSPENDED HIM AND STRIPPED HIM OF HIS TITLE. Shots from fights Lipsyte: Wave after wave of TV reporter, radio reporter, they all came, you know, ‘You know in a few minutes, you’re gonna be, you know, in the front lines.’ And then black Muslims would come and they’d say, ‘Some cracka’ sergeant gonna’ drop a hand grenade down into your pants.’ Um, and he was wild, and he was exasperated. And late in the evening, I remember standing there, late in the evening, the last radio reporter comes and goes, ‘So champ, how do you feel about being re-classified and going to Vietnam? And then he said, ‘I ain’t got nothing against them viet cong.’ Then he spent the next couple of years backing that up. He refused to step forward to be drafted, he was stripped of his title, but he stood firm. Getty Archival / Lipsyte on screen Rhoden: The heavyweight champion of the world is telling people that you can take my belt, you can take my championship and that introduced a lot to courage, to honor, to valor, it was not just about running fast, jumping high, but what do you stand for? What are your morals, what are your principles? What’s stand would you take, what are you willing to risk? Rhoden on screen / Getty Archival Lipsyte: So for the next 3 and half years he couldn’t fight and he had to make a living mostly by um speaking engagements on college campuses. Ali at college speaking engagements Ali - “The purpose of war is to kill kill kill and keep on killing innocent people” Lipsyte: but you know in the course of that, in the Q and A’s after as they asked him political questions he was a quick study / he would kind of begin to understand you know the main threads of American life. Ali -“You my oppose when I want justice ...” Ali was never tried or even fined. He won his first appeal in 1970, When a federal court upheld his bid for a State license. He QUICKLY GOT BACK TO WORK BEATING JERRY QUARRY AND OSCAR BONAVENA. HIS CHANCE TO RECLAIM HIS TITLES CAME IN MARCH 1971, AGAINST HIS OLD FRIEND, JOE FRAZIER. IT WAS DUBBED THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY. Shots from fights Sound UP - Ali and Frazier arguing Anderson: today now, 40 years later uh a lot of people because of their, their love of Ali, think Ali probably should have won that fight. Joe Frasier beat him up. / I can remember him saying, when a man gets me going that a real punch. And when he knocks me down that’s a REALL punch. And uh Joe Frasier had knocked him down. Anderson onscreen / Shots from fight IT WAS ALI’S FIRST PROFESSIONAL LOSS, But even though the decision was undisputed, He continued to talk trash about Joe Frazier Every chance he got. Wherever he might be. Ali defeated a dethroned Joe Frazier in January 1974, But his next championship bout wasn’t until ten months later When he squared off against GEORGE FOREMAN, IN A MATCH IN ZAIRE DUBBED, THE RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE. Anderson: most people, including myself thought Foreman would demolish him. / there were 60, 000 people a soccer stadium in the middle of Africa. / yelling Ali boom-eye-aye. What that meant was Ali, kill him, because he was their guy. Anderson onscreen / Shots from fight Ali - 100,00 Africans screaming “Ali-boom-aye-yay .....” And he could- one reason was that Ali had told them that Foreman was a Belgian. For years it was the Belgian Congo. Belgium, that- was a colony for Belgium. So the name-the citizens there hated Belgium. So when Ali told them that Foreman was Belgian, he wasn’t of course, but when he told them that, they wanted to believe that Foreman was the enemy. Rhoden: that fight was just masterful. / he you know he just blew foreman’s mind you know. He completely as mush as one competitor could completely turn someone inside out- Ali had completely turned foreman inside out. Rhoden onscreen / Shots from fight Anderson: He would back off into the ropes and let Foreman pummel him. He would cover up like this, and foreman would just smash his ribs and everything. And then Ali would skirt away and bounce away, and finally Foreman just kind of punched himself out. Then Ali threw a right hand in the 8th round. And Foreman actually spun. Cause I was sitting there and looked up and Foreman spun and went down and just had no energy to get up. And Ali again now was the champion, with 3 years after he had lost the first year, and now suddenly everybody loved him. Anderson onscreen / Shots from fight After Foreman, Ali quickly dispatched Chuck Wepner and then Ron Lyle. A few months later, he flew to Malaysia To defend his tile against Joe Bugner. Anderson: (boxing gloves story) Lipsyte: (King of all Kings story) Lipsyte: people say well the great- he called himself the greatest, the prettiest that was just kind of box office. Eh, I don’t think so. I think that he, he uh, he did have this grandiosity about him and he, he was a narcissist. / there were some parts of him which can’t avoid / he was always available uh to fight. In some of the worse dictatorships in the world. Uh, he was enthralled to Don king, a criminal. Um there were kind of really kind of dark parts of him. But perhaps the darkest uh, was the a kind of a vicious attack on Joe Frazier. Calling him an uncle Tom and making fun of his looks. You know, calling him you know a gorilla, uh and I will, I will beat the gorilla in the thrilla in manila. FRAZIER SUPPORTED ALI’S RIGHT NOT TO SERVE IN THE VIETNAM WAR. HE TESTIFIED ON HIS FRIEND’S BEHALF BEFORE CONGRESS. EVEN LENT HIM MONEY WHEN ALI WASN’T FIGHTING. BUT WHAT STARTED AS A FRIENDLY RIVALRY IN THE RING BECAME SOMETHING ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT Frazier was hurt and angry WHEN THEY FACED OFF FOR THE THIRD TIME IN THE PHILIPPINES. Images of Fazier supporting Ali Anderson: The fight in Manila / god it had to be 100 degrees in that arena. And, and it was a brutal fight. Brutal I mean I, I called it an epic in brutality. And it was. I mean you couldn’t there was never a slow moment I mean the punches were brutal. And also by that time, four years after the first fight in the garden they were older and slower, they really couldn’t get out of each other’s way so every punch landed. / it stopped in the 15th round by Joe Frasier’s trainer because / his left eye had been closed and he couldn’t see- the trainer said he couldn’t see Ali’s right hand punches coming. So he stopped it. Even though he thought Frasier was ahead. Eddie Fudge was one of the great boxing trainers of all time and he stopped the fight because he didn’t; want Joe to get hurt. And maybe- who knows what. / One of the first questions, if not the first somebody said to him, what a brutal fight, what was it like in that ring? And I’ll never forget, all Ali said was “it was next to death.” Anderson onscreen / Shots from fight Frazier lost to Foreman again And then retired. Ali fought TEN MORE TIMES Defeating COOPMAN YOUNG DUNN NORTON EVANGELISTA SHAVERS He lost his title to Leon SPINKS in 1978 won it back later that year. And lost it for the last time to Larry HOLMES in 1980. But still Ali fought on He retired AFTER LOSING TO TREVOR BURBICK ON DECEMBER 11, 1981, A LITTLE OVER A MONTH BEFORE HIS 40th BIRTHDAY. TWO YEARS LATER, DAVE ANDERSON CAUGHT UP WITH HIM BEFORE ALI LEFT ON A GOOD-WILL TOUR. Shots from fights Anderson: He was probably a few pounds heavy, so he was- was going through some training, just light training. But something to get the weight off. In a gym in Miami, his great trainer Angelo Dundee was with him. And then afterwards we spoke- there were about 4 or 5 writers there and I remember that’s the first time I noticed he was slurring his words. I mean it was very uh very apparent. You couldn’t miss it. / to get, get the readers’ appreciation of how serious that was. I put the words together. / I mean it was, it was sad to hear him do that. And as we all know it got worse and worse and worse and worse. Anderson onscreen / image from NYT article of words running together ALI’S DECLINE WAS AS RAPID AS IT WAS DRAMATIC. HE APPEARED IN PUBLIC LESS AND LESS FREQUENTLY AS TIME WENT ON, BUT DESPITE HIS OBVIOUS DIFFICULTIES, HE NEVER LOST HIS SPARK Misc public appearances / Atlanta Olympics Rhoden: I saw him was at the Olympics in Sydney Australia, by this time the Parkinson’s it, it began to ravish him. But I remember meeting him uh, at some event and it was again it was a small gathering and so um, you know, I introduced myself- re-introduced myself to him. And I said, he said- by this time- he said “what, what’s your name?” and I said my name is Bill Rhoden. He said no, no, what’s your real name? Stills of Sydney olympics Ali: Muhammad means one who’s worthy of all praises and one who’s praise worthy and Ali means the most high, but Clay only meant only dirt with no ingredients, see. Ali onscreen Ali: “what’s my name!?” Patterson or turell fight

By Robert Lipsyte

• June 4, 2016

Muhammad Ali , the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion who helped define his turbulent times as the most charismatic and controversial sports figure of the 20th century, died on Friday in a Phoenix-area hospital. He was 74.

His death was confirmed by Bob Gunnell, a family spokesman. The cause was septic shock, a family spokeswoman said.

Ali, who lived near Phoenix, had had Parkinson’s disease for more than 30 years. He was admitted to the hospital on Monday with what Mr. Gunnell said was a respiratory problem.

Ali was the most thrilling if not the best heavyweight ever, carrying into the ring a physically lyrical, unorthodox boxing style that fused speed, agility and power more seamlessly than that of any fighter before him.

But he was more than the sum of his athletic gifts. An agile mind, a buoyant personality, a brash self-confidence and an evolving set of personal convictions fostered a magnetism that the ring alone could not contain. He entertained as much with his mouth as with his fists, narrating his life with a patter of inventive doggerel. ( “Me! Wheeeeee!” )

Ali was as polarizing a superstar as the sports world has ever produced — both admired and vilified in the 1960s and ’70s for his religious, political and social stances. His refusal to be drafted during the Vietnam War, his rejection of racial integration at the height of the civil rights movement, his conversion from Christianity to Islam and the changing of his “slave” name, Cassius Clay , to one bestowed by the separatist black sect he joined, the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, were perceived as serious threats by the conservative establishment and noble acts of defiance by the liberal opposition.

Loved or hated, he remained for 50 years one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

A Look Back at the Greatest

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In later life Ali became something of a secular saint, a legend in soft focus. He was respected for having sacrificed more than three years of his boxing prime and untold millions of dollars for his antiwar principles after being banished from the ring; he was extolled for his un-self-conscious gallantry in the face of incurable illness, and he was beloved for his accommodating sweetness in public.

In 1996, he was trembling and nearly mute as he lit the Olympic caldron in Atlanta .

That passive image was far removed from the exuberant, talkative, vainglorious 22-year-old who bounded out of Louisville, Ky., and onto the world stage in 1964 with an upset victory over Sonny Liston to become the world champion. The press called him the Louisville Lip. He called himself the Greatest.

Ali also proved to be a shape-shifter — a public figure who kept reinventing his persona.

As a bubbly teenage gold medalist at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he parroted America’s Cold War line, lecturing a Soviet reporter about the superiority of the United States. But he became a critic of his country and a government target in 1966 with his declaration “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.”

“He lived a lot of lives for a lot of people,” said the comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory. “He was able to tell white folks for us to go to hell.”

But Ali had his hypocrisies, or at least inconsistencies. How could he consider himself a “race man” yet mock the skin color, hair and features of other African-Americans, most notably Joe Frazier , his rival and opponent in three classic matches? Ali called him “the gorilla,” and long afterward Frazier continued to express hurt and bitterness.

If there was a supertitle to Ali’s operatic life, it was this: “I don’t have to be who you want me to be; I’m free to be who I want.” He made that statement the morning after he won his first heavyweight title. It informed every aspect of his life, including the way he boxed.

The traditionalist fight crowd was appalled by his style; he kept his hands too low, the critics said, and instead of allowing punches to “slip” past his head by bobbing and weaving, he leaned back from them.

Eventually his approach prevailed. Over 21 years, he won 56 fights and lost five. His Ali Shuffle may have been pure showboating, but the “rope-a-dope” — in which he rested on the ring’s ropes and let an opponent punch himself out — was the stratagem that won the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman in 1974, the fight in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in which he regained his title.

His personal life was paradoxical. Ali belonged to a sect that emphasized strong families, a subject on which he lectured, yet he had dalliances as casual as autograph sessions. A brief first marriage to Sonji Roi ended in divorce after she refused to dress and behave as a proper Nation wife. (She died in 2005.) While married to Belinda Boyd, his second wife, Ali traveled openly with Veronica Porche, whom he later married. That marriage, too, ended in divorce.

Ali was politically and socially idiosyncratic as well. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the television interviewer David Frost asked him if he considered Al Qaeda and the Taliban evil. He replied that terrorism was wrong but that he had to “dodge questions like that” because “I have people who love me.” He said he had “businesses around the country” and an image to consider.

As a spokesman for the Muhammad Ali Center, a museum dedicated to “respect, hope and understanding,” which opened in his hometown, Louisville, in 2005, he was known to interrupt a fund-raising meeting with an ethnic joke. In one he said: “If a black man, a Mexican and a Puerto Rican are sitting in the back of a car, who’s driving? Give up? The po-lice.”

But Ali had generated so much good will by then that there was little he could say or do that would change the public’s perception of him.

“We forgive Muhammad Ali his excesses,” an Ali biographer, Dave Kindred, wrote, “because we see in him the child in us, and if he is foolish or cruel, if he is arrogant, if he is outrageously in love with his reflection, we forgive him because we no more can condemn him than condemn a rainbow for dissolving into the dark. Rainbows are born of thunderstorms, and Muhammad Ali is both.”

Ambition at an Early Age

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born in Louisville on Jan. 17, 1942, into a family of strivers that included teachers, musicians and craftsmen. Some of them traced their ancestry to Henry Clay, the 19th-century representative, senator and secretary of state, and his cousin Cassius Marcellus Clay, a noted abolitionist.

Ali’s mother, Odessa, was a cook and a house cleaner, his father a sign painter and a church muralist who blamed discrimination for his failure to become a recognized artist. Violent and often drunk, Clay Sr. filled the heads of Cassius and his younger brother, Rudolph (later Rahman Ali), with the teachings of the 20th-century black separatist Marcus Garvey and a refrain that would become Ali’s — “I am the greatest.”

Beyond his father’s teachings, Ali traced his racial and political identity to the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a black 14-year-old from Chicago who was believed to have flirted with a white woman on a visit to Mississippi. Clay was about the same age as Till, and the photographs of the brutalized dead youth haunted him, he said.

Cassius started to box at 12, after his new $60 red Schwinn bicycle was stolen off a downtown street. He reported the theft to Joe Martin, a police officer who ran a boxing gym . When Cassius boasted what he would do to the thief when he caught him, Martin suggested that he first learn how to punch properly.

Cassius was quick, dedicated and gifted at publicizing a youth boxing show, “Tomorrow’s Champions,” on local television. He was soon its star.

For all his ambition and willingness to work hard, education — public and segregated — eluded him. The only subjects in which he received satisfactory grades were art and gym, his high school reported years later. Already an amateur boxing champion, he graduated 376th in a class of 391. He was never taught to read properly; years later he confided that he had never read a book, neither the ones on which he collaborated nor even the Quran, although he said he had reread certain passages dozens of times. He memorized his poems and speeches, laboriously printing them out over and over.

Muhammad Ali’s Words Stung Like a Bee, Too

Outside the boxing ring, Ali fought his battles with his mouth.

In boxing he found boundaries, discipline and stable guidance. Martin, who was white, trained him for six years, although historical revisionism later gave more credit to Fred Stoner, a black trainer in the Smoketown neighborhood. It was Martin who persuaded Clay to “gamble your life” and go to Rome with the 1960 Olympic team despite his almost pathological fear of flying.

Clay won the Olympic light-heavyweight title and came home a professional contender. In Rome, Clay was everything the sports diplomats could have hoped for — a handsome, charismatic and black glad-hander. When a Russian reporter asked him about racial prejudice, Clay ordered him to “tell your readers we got qualified people working on that, and I’m not worried about the outcome.”

“To me, the U.S.A. is still the best country in the world, counting yours,” he added. “It may be hard to get something to eat sometimes, but anyhow I ain’t fighting alligators and living in a mud hut.”

Ali would later cringe at that quotation, especially when journalists harked back to it as proof that a merry man-child had been misguided into becoming a hateful militant.

Rise of Muhammad Ali

Milestones and career highlights of Ali, a showman in and outside of the boxing ring.

Of course, after the Rome Games, few journalists followed Clay home to Louisville, where he was publicly referred to as “the Olympic nigger” and denied service at many downtown restaurants. After one such rejection, the story goes, he hurled his gold medal into the Ohio River. But Clay, and later Ali, gave different accounts of that act, and according to Thomas Hauser, author of the oral history “Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times,” Clay had simply lost the medal.

Clay turned professional by signing a six-year contract with 11 local white millionaires. (“They got the complexions and connections to give me good directions,” he said.) The so-called Louisville Sponsoring Group supported him while he was groomed by Angelo Dundee, a top trainer, in Miami.

At a mosque there, Clay was introduced to the Nation of Islam, known to the news media as “Black Muslims.” Elijah Muhammad, the group’s leader, taught that white people were devils genetically created by an evil scientist. On Allah’s chosen day of retribution, the Mother of Planes would bomb all but the righteous, and the righteous would be spirited away.

Years later, after leaving the group and converting to orthodox Islam, Ali gave the Nation of Islam credit for offering African-Americans a black-is-beautiful message at a time of low self-esteem and persecution. “Color doesn’t make a man a devil,” he said. “It’s the heart and soul and mind that count. What’s on the outside is only decoration.”

Title and Transformation

Clay enjoyed early success against prudently chosen opponents. His outrageous predictions, usually in rhyme — “This is no jive, Cooper will go in five” — put off many older sportswriters, especially since most of the predictions came true. (His fight against the Englishman Henry Cooper did end in the fifth round at Wembley Stadium in 1963, although Cooper, who had knocked Clay down in the fourth, did not “go down.”) The reporters’ beau ideal of a boxer was the laconic Joe Louis. But they still wrote about Clay. Younger sportswriters, raised in an age of Andy Warhol, happenings and the “put on,” were delighted by the hype and by Clay’s friendly accessibility.

In 1963, at 21, after only 15 professional fights, he was on the cover of Time magazine. The winking quality of the prose — “Cassius Clay is Hercules, struggling through the twelve labors. He is Jason, chasing the Golden Fleece” — reinforced the assumption that he was just another boxer being sacrificed to the box office’s lust for fresh meat. It was feared he would be seriously injured by the baleful slugger Liston, a 7-to-1 betting favorite to retain his title in Miami Beach, Fla., on Feb. 25, 1964.

But Clay was joyously comic. Encouraged by his assistant trainer and “spiritual adviser,” Drew Brown, known as Bundini, Clay mocked Liston as the “big ugly bear” and chanted a battle cry: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, rumble, young man, rumble.”

The Beatles, on their first American tour, were in town and showed up for a photo op at Clay’s training gym. Malcolm X, a leading minister for the Nation of Islam and a worrisome presence to many white Americans, was there, too, with his family members as guests of Clay, whom they saw as a big brother.

To the shock of the crowd, Clay, taller and broader than Liston at 6 feet 3 inches and 210 pounds and much faster, took immediate control of the fight. He danced away from Liston’s vaunted left hook and peppered his face with jabs, opening a cut over his left eye. Clay was in trouble only once. Just before the start of the fifth round, his eyes began to sting. It was liniment, but he suspected poison. Dundee had to push him into the ring. Two rounds later, Liston, slumped on his stool, his left arm hanging uselessly, gave up. He had torn muscles swinging at Clay in vain.

Clay, the new champion, capered along the ring apron, shouting at the press: “Eat your words! I shook up the world! I’m king of the world!”

(More than a year later, in May 1965, he would retain his crown in lightning-quick fashion in a rematch with Liston in Lewiston, Me . Within two minutes of the first round, Ali threw what became known as the phantom punch, sending Liston sprawling and resulting in a disputed decision to end the fight.)

The morning after the Miami Beach fight, a calm Clay affirmed his rumored membership in the Nation of Islam. He would be Cassius X. (A few weeks later he became Muhammad Ali, which he said meant “Worthy of all praise most high.”) That day he harangued his audience with a preview of what would, over the next few years, become a series of longer and more detailed lectures about religion and race. This one was about, as he put it, “staying with your own kind.”

“In the jungle, lions are with lions and tigers with tigers,” he said. “I don’t want to go where I’m not wanted.”

The only prominent leader to send Ali a telegram of congratulations was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I remember when Ali joined the Nation of Islam,” Julian Bond, the civil rights activist and politician, once said. “The act of joining was not something many of us particularly liked. But the notion he’d do it — that he’d jump out there, join this group that was so despised by mainstream America, and be proud of it — sent a little thrill through you.”

The thrills gave way to darker thoughts. After Malcolm X left the Nation and was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965, by members of the group, there was talk that Ali had been tacitly complicit. Jack Newfield, a political journalist with an interest in boxing, wrote, “If Ali, as the new heavyweight champion, had remained loyal to his mentor, and continued to lend his public support to Malcolm, history might have gone in a different direction.”

Refusing to Be Drafted

On Feb. 17, 1966, a day already roiled by the Senate’s televised hearings on the war in Vietnam, Ali learned that he had been reclassified 1A by his Louisville selective service board. He had originally been disqualified by a substandard score on a mental aptitude test. But a subsequent lowering of criteria made him eligible to go to war. The timing, however, was suspicious to some; the contract with the Louisville millionaires had run out, and Nation members were taking over as Ali’s managers and promoters.

“Why me?” Ali said when reporters swarmed around his rented Miami cottage to ask about his new draft status. “I buy a lot of bullets, at least three jet bombers a year, and pay the salary of 50,000 fighting men with the money they take from me after my fights.”

But as the reporters continued to press him with questions about the war, the geography of Asia and his thoughts about killing Vietcong, he snapped, “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.”

The remark was front-page news around the world. In America, the news media’s response was mostly unfavorable, if not hostile. The sports columnist Red Smith of The New York Herald Tribune wrote, “Squealing over the possibility that the military may call him up, Cassius makes himself as sorry a spectacle as those unwashed punks who picket and demonstrate against the war.”

Most of the press refused to refer to Ali by his new name. When two black contenders, Floyd Patterson and Ernie Terrell, insisted on calling him Cassius Clay, Ali taunted them in the ring as he delivered savage beatings.

On April 28, 1967, Ali refused to be drafted and requested conscientious-objector status. He was immediately stripped of his title by boxing commissions around the country. Several months later he was convicted of draft evasion, a verdict he appealed. He did not fight again until he was almost 29, losing three and a half years of his athletic prime.

They were years of personal and intellectual growth, however, as Ali supported himself on the college lecture circuit, offering medleys of Muslim dogma and boxing verse. In the question-and-answer sessions that followed, Ali was forced to explain his religion, his Vietnam stand and his opposition (unpopular on most campuses) to marijuana and interracial dating. Now the “onliest boxer in history that people asked questions like a senator” developed coherent answers.

During his exile from the ring, Ali starred in a short-lived Broadway musical, “Buck White,” one of several commercial ventures. There was a fast-food chain called Champburger and a mock movie fight with the popular former champion Rocky Marciano in which Ali outboxed the slugger until being knocked out himself in the final round. The broadcaster Howard Cosell, one of Ali’s most steadfast supporters in the news media, was responsible for keeping him on television, both as an interview subject and as a commentator on boxing matches.

As Ali’s draft-evasion case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, he returned to the ring on Oct. 26, 1970, through the efforts of black politicians in Atlanta. The fight, which ended with a quick knockout of the white contender Jerry Quarry, was only a tuneup for Ali’s anticipated showdown with Frazier, the new champion. But it was a night of glamour and history as Coretta Scott King, Bill Cosby, Diana Ross, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sidney Poitier turned out to honor Ali. The Rev. Ralph Abernathy presented him with the annual Dr. King award, calling him “the March on Washington all in two fists.”

“The Fight,” as the Madison Square Garden bout with Frazier on March 8, 1971, was billed, lived up to expectations as an epic match. With Norman Mailer ringside taking notes for a book and Frank Sinatra shooting pictures for Life magazine, Ali stood toe to toe with Frazier and slugged it out as if determined to prove that he had “heart,” that he could stand up to punishment. Frazier won a 15-round decision. Both men suffered noticeable physical damage.

To Ali’s boosters, the money he had lost standing up for his principles and the beating he had taken from Frazier proved his sincerity. To his critics, the bloody redemption meant he had finally grown up. The Supreme Court also took a positive view. On June 28, 1971, it unanimously reversed a lower court decision and granted Ali his conscientious-objector status.

Resurgence and Decline

It was assumed now that Ali’s time had passed and that he would become a high-grade “opponent,” the fighter to beat for those establishing themselves. But his time had returned. Although he was slower, his artistry was even more refined. “He didn’t have fights,” wrote Jim Murray of The Los Angeles Times, “he gave recitals.”

He won 13 of his next 14 fights, including a rematch with Frazier, who had lost his title to George Foreman, a bigger, more frightening version of Liston.

Ali was the underdog, smaller and seven years older than Foreman, when they met on Oct. 30, 1974 , in Zaire, then ruled by Mobutu Sese Seko. Each fighter was guaranteed $5 million, an extraordinary sum at the time. The fight also launched the career of the promoter Don King and was the subject of Leon Gast’s documentary “When We Were Kings,” which was released more than 20 years later. (Ali attended a special screening, along with hip-hop performances, at Radio City Music Hall.) The film won a 1997 Academy Award.

Ali reveled in the African setting, repeating an aphorism he had heard from Brown, his assistant trainer: “The world is a black shirt with a few white buttons.”

As the fight progressed, the crowd chanted, “Ali, bomaye!” (“Ali, kill him!”), first out of concern as Ali leaned against the ropes and absorbed Foreman’s sledgehammer blows on his arms and shoulders, and then in mounting excitement as Foreman wore himself out. In the eighth round, in a blur of punches, Ali knocked out Foreman to regain the title. He leaned down to reporters and said, “What did I tell you?”

On Dec. 10, 1974, Ali was invited to the White House for the first time, by President Gerald R. Ford, an occasion that signified not only a turning point in the country’s embrace of Ali but also a return of the Lip. Ali told the president, “You made a big mistake letting me come because now I’m going after your job.”

Ali successfully defended his title 10 times over the next three years, at increasing physical cost. He knocked out Frazier in their third match, the so-called Thrilla in Manila in 1975, but the punishment of their 14 rounds, Ali said, felt close to dying.

In 1978 he lost and then regained his title in fights with Leon Spinks. Ali’s longtime ring doctor, Ferdie Pacheco, urged him to quit, noting the slowing of his reflexes and the slurring of his speech as symptoms of damage. Ali refused. In 1980, he was battered in a loss to the champion Larry Holmes. A year later, he fought for the last time, losing to the journeyman Trevor Berbick in the Bahamas.

Ali was soon told that he had Parkinson’s syndrome . Several doctors have speculated that it was brought on by too many punches to the head. The diagnosis was later changed to Parkinson’s disease, according to his wife, Lonnie. She said it had been brought on by Ali’s exposure to pesticides and other toxic chemicals at his training camp in Deer Lake, Pa.

A Champion Is Celebrated

After retiring from the ring, Ali made speeches emphasizing spirituality, peace and tolerance, and undertook quasi-diplomatic missions to Africa and Iraq. Even as he lost mobility and speech, he traveled often from his home in Berrien Springs, Mich. Product and corporate endorsements brought him closer to the “show me the money” sensibilities of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, the heirs to his global celebrity.

In 1999, Ali became the first boxer on a Wheaties box. On Dec. 31 that year, he rang out the millennium at the New York Stock Exchange. In 2003, a $7,500 art book celebrating his life was published. His life was the subject of a television movie and a feature film directed by Michael Mann, with Will Smith as Ali. (Both productions sanitized his early religious and political viewpoints.) The same licensing firm that owned most of Elvis Presley’s image purchased rights to Ali’s.

Thomas Hauser, his biographer, decried the new “commercialism” surrounding Ali and “the rounding off the rough edges of his journey.” In a book of essays published in 2005, “The Lost Legacy of Muhammad Ali,” Hauser wrote, “We should cherish the memory of Ali as a warrior and as a gleaming symbol of defiance against an unjust social order when he was young.”

In 2005, calling him the greatest boxer of all time, President George W. Bush presented the Medal of Freedom to Ali in a White House ceremony.

In recent years, Parkinson’s disease and spinal stenosis, which required surgery, limited Ali’s mobility and ability to communicate. He spent most of his time at his home in Paradise Valley, Ariz., often watching Western movies and old black-and-white TV shows. He ventured out mostly for physical therapy, movies and concerts. He rarely did TV interviews, his wife said, because he no longer liked the way he looked on camera.

“But he loved the adoration of crowds,” she said. “Even though he became vulnerable in ways he couldn’t control, he never lost his childlike innocence, his sunny, positive nature. Jokes and pranks and magic tricks. He wanted to entertain people, to make them happy.”

An earlier version of a graphic with this obituary misstated the year Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, won an Olympic gold medal. It was 1960, not 1920.

An obituary on Sunday and in some editions on Saturday about Muhammad Ali misstated the name of a Broadway show in which he appeared. It was “Buck White,” not “Big Time Buck White.” (“Buck White” was a musical version of the play “Big Time Buck White.”) The obituary also misstated the outcome of the 1963 fight between Ali, then still known as Cassius Clay, and Henry Cooper. The fight was stopped in the fifth round, after Cooper had knocked Clay down in the fourth; Cooper did not “go down in the fifth round ... after he had staggered Clay in the fourth.”

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary misstated the day Ali was admitted to the hospital where he died. It was Monday, May 30 — not Friday, June 3.

How we handle corrections

Remember notable deaths of 2016.

Muhammad Ali Dead: Legendary Boxer Was 74

By Robert Lipsyte

Because The New York Times ’s boxing writer didn’t think the fight between Clay and Liston was worth his time, a kid reporter had been pulled off rewrite and sent instead. Everyone knew Clay had no chance, so my instructions were stark: as soon as I arrived in Miami Beach, I was to drive my rental car between the arena where the fight would be and the nearest hospital until I knew the route cold. The Times didn’t want me wasting any deadline time getting lost on the way to the intensive-care unit.

I had the route down by the time I got to Clay’s gym. He wasn’t there yet, but these four guys my age were, and they were stomping and cursing because security guards had herded them into an empty dressing room to wait. Had I any sense of who they were (or would become), I might have been more reticent in pushing my way into the room too.

I asked for their predictions for the fight. They said that Liston would destroy the silly, over-hyped wanker who had no business fighting for the title. Then they began cursing again and banging on the walls.

Suddenly the dressing room burst open, and Cassius Clay filled the doorway. The Beatles and I gasped. He was so much bigger than he looked in pictures. He was beautiful. He glowed. And he was laughing.

“Hello there, Beatles,” he roared. “We oughta do some road shows together. We’ll get rich.”

The Beatles were quick studies. They followed Clay to the boxing ring like kindergarten kids. You would have thought they’d met before to choreograph their capers. The band bounced into the ring, frolicked, dropped down to pray that Clay would stop hitting them. They lined up so he could knock them all out with one punch, then they fell like dominoes. They formed a pyramid to reach Clay’s jaw so one of them could pretend to sock it.

Once the Beatles left, Clay worked out, then walked back to the dressing room for a rubdown. As he stretched out on a table, he beckoned me. We’d never spoken. “Who were those little sissies?,” he whispered.

Seven days later, Clay beat Liston to claim the title. He was 22 years old, one of the youngest heavyweight champions of all time, as well as one of the best, the most charismatic and the most controversial. With that triumph over Liston, Clay’s trajectory was set: a hero and a villain, then a principled warrior and, finally, a beatified legend, at once misinterpreted and beloved.

Twelve-year-old Cassius Clay had left his new Schwinn on a Louisville street corner while he gorged on free popcorn at the annual Home Show. When he returned, the bike was gone.

Someone told him to find a police officer. There’s one in that basement there. Clay ran down into the Columbia Gym. Boys, black and white, were slamming bags, jumping rope, sparring in front of mirrors as bells clanged and men yelled, “Time!” He was spellbound. Joe Martin, an off-duty white cop who coached young boxers, listened patiently as the boy ranted: “Somebody stole my bike … when I find him I’m gonna whup him, I’m gonna …”

“Do you know how to box?” asked Martin.

Martin would recall that Clay was skinny and “ordinary” as a fighter at first. But he quickly found, as Clay’s pro trainer Angelo Dundee would a few years later, that the youngster was impossible to discourage, “easily the hardest worker of any kid I ever taught.”

The crude but crowd-pleasing slugger soon became a neighborhood celebrity. Gang members respected him, teachers overlooked his unsatisfactory schoolwork, and, perhaps most important for his confidence, he gained recognition within his father’s large and accomplished extended family of teachers, musicians, craftspeople, and business owners. The family traced itself back to the statesman and abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay, who freed his slaves. One of them named a son Herman Clay, who in 1912 named a son Cassius Marcellus Clay, who in turn named his firstborn, on January 17, 1942, Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.

Years later, when I asked Muhammad Ali about his lineage, he bridled. He was a new member of the Nation of Islam then, dogmatic in his anti-white rhetoric, but mindful of his family’s pride in its heritage. Finally he said that if there was any white blood, “it came by rape and defilement.”

Ali’s father instilled in him the sense that he would have to make his way by following white-man rules, at least until he was big enough to make his own. He started making them quickly. Despite resistance from trainers and coaches, Ali evolved a style that probably ruined many other fighters who didn’t have his speed and talent. Few could get away with holding their fists at their waist as he did, or with avoiding punches by pulling back instead of “slipping” them, leaning to one side or the other so they passed harmlessly over a shoulder. His style often led people to believe he couldn’t take a punch.

As a teen in Louisville, Clay’s boundless enthusiasm, self-promotion, and confidence led him to Angelo Dundee’s hotel room. He had heard that the famous trainer was in town. Dundee remembers getting a phone call that went something like: “This is Cassius Clay, the Golden Gloves champion of Louisville, Kentucky. I’m going to be the heavyweight champion of the world. I’m in the lobby. Can I come up?”

The 15-year-old was invited up. And Dundee was soon his trainer. He tended to have that effect on people. Fellow students at Central High remember a big puppy who sweetly and tentatively hit on girls who dismissed him as not very bright and least likely to succeed. But they did enjoy watching him do his daily roadwork, trailing the school bus and shouting that prediction of becoming champion of the world.

He was a sensation at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, a handsome, outgoing 18-year-old light heavyweight with a dazzling smile and a motor mouth. He chased the willowy beauty Wilma Rudolph, winner of three gold medals in track, until she couldn’t stop laughing. He took pictures with his box camera. When a Soviet journalist digging for controversy asked about racial segregation in America, Clay said, “Tell your readers we got qualified people working on that, and I’m not worried about the outcome.

“To me, the U.S.A. is still the best country in the world, including yours. It may be hard to get something to eat sometimes, but anyhow I ain’t fighting alligators and living in a mud hut.”

He would later regret that quote and attribute it to ignorance, but as it flashed around the world he became a symbol of what was right about America and sports, especially back home where anti-communism and racial unrest were coming to a boil. Here was a descendant of slaves grateful for the advantages of democracy, said the pundits; he wasn’t agitating to vote or sitting in at lunch counters. He was just knocking down commie boxers with those hammering fists. Did you notice how straight he stood on the medal stand after winning his gold as they played our anthem?

But back home, he was, in his own words and others’, the “Olympic nigger.” When he was refused service at a restaurant in segregated Louisville, he said later, he threw his gold medal in the Ohio River. This was not true. The medal was stolen when he left it unattended. Like the bike.

After Rome, Dundee steered Ali prudently through 19 mostly underwhelming professional opponents. The fighter’s rhyming predictions (“This is no jive. Moore will go in five”) delighted us younger reporters. Older traditionalists, who insisted on the gravitas of pugilism, were not amused.

Tickets were moving slowly before the championship bout with Liston. Clay shouldn’t even have been there. His greatest accomplishment to that point was appearing on the cover of TIME, more for his looks, personality, and doggerel than for his ring record. The odds were 7–1 against him, a prediction that no poetry could counter, even lines as compelling as:

Yes, the crowd did not dream

When they laid down their money

That they would see

A total eclipse of the Sonny .

(Just how much of his doggerel did Clay actually write? Certainly less than he claimed. Dundee has been accused of lending a pen, as have Drew “Bundini” Brown, his assistant trainer in charge of morale, and even various sportswriters. But the best lines, including the ones above—part of a much longer verse—were written by a well-known comedy writer, Gary Belkin, for an album that Clay recorded, I Am the Greatest .)

The promoters blamed the weak sales on the reports of Clay’s membership in the Nation of Islam and his friendship with its most famous spokesman, Malcolm X. Malcolm was in Miami in the week leading up to the fight. According to Manning Marable’s exhaustive Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, he agreed to stay out of sight until fight night in exchange for a front-row seat.

At the time, Malcolm was on the outs with the Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad. Clay did not seem to be aware that he’d soon have to choose, with deadly results, between the two men.

With boundless exuberance, Clay tried to hype the gate, talking his trash (before it was thus named)—“Liston even smells like a bear. I’m gonna give him to the local zoo after I whup him”—and repeating his (as it turned out, accurate) prediction: “He will go in eight to prove that I’m great, and if he wants to go to heaven I’ll get him in seven.”

Clay’s critics would later point to that confidence as proof the fight had been fixed. Commentators, though, characterized his posturing as that of a scared boy whistling to keep up his spirits. The mature Ali admitted he had been scared of Liston; in fact, Malcolm had to calm him by saying Allah would not allow him to be beaten.

While Liston’s glare reduced the press pack to bland and timid questions, Clay’s affability emboldened us. “Exactly what are you going to do,” asked a Boston sportswriter a few days before the fight, “when Sonny Liston beats you after all your big talk?” Clay, sprawled on his dressing-room table, blowing kisses at his reflection in a mirror, replied, “The next day I’ll be on the sidewalk hollering, ‘No man ever beat me twice.’ I’ll be screaming for a rematch.”

Right up until he stepped into the ring on the night of February 25, 1964, there were whispers that Clay, terrified, had fled the country. But the first intimation that he might not have to be rushed to intensive care came the moment he stepped into the ring. The gasp in the arena when the two fighters met for the referee’s routine instructions was not in response to Clay’s being there but to his superior size. Wasn’t this supposed to be David and Goliath?

If it was, the kid had no end of smooth stones to fling. From the start, he peppered the champion’s head with lightning jabs and straight rights. By the third round, he had opened a nasty gash under Liston’s left eye that would require stitches. He was in control throughout, in trouble just once. In the fifth, he was temporarily blinded by a substance that might have been purposely smeared on Liston’s gloves earlier. Clay, thinking he was being poisoned, screamed, “Cut the gloves off.” Dundee, experienced and cool, washed out his eyes and pushed him back in the ring. “Daddy, this is the big one. This is for the title. Get in there.”

Clay danced until his eyes cleared, then battered Liston with a fresh barrage. Liston slumped on his stool and didn’t come out for the seventh round. The champ had quit. Clay leaned over the ring ropes to shout at the press, “Eat your words. I am the greatest! I … am … the … greatest!”

There were rowdy celebrations in Miami Beach that night, but the new champion enjoyed quieter revels. He shared vanilla ice cream with Malcolm and a few Muslim friends. The next morning, Clay confirmed his membership in the Nation of Islam.

Soon he would renounce his “slave name” and demand to be called, in the Black Muslim manner, Cassius X. And then, in what Marable describes as an attempt to subvert Malcolm’s influence on the young convert, Elijah Muhammad bestowed a new name, Muhammad Ali, which he said meant “worthy of all praise most high.”

The press mostly refused to honor the name change, trying to finesse it by calling him, simply, “Champ.” He was routinely described as “ungrateful” to a system that had made him famous and rich (although corporate endorsements stayed out of reach). At the least, he was “brainwashed” and “misguided.” Jimmy Cannon, the influential columnist who had once written that “Joe Louis is a credit to his race, the human race,” called Ali’s ties to the Nation of Islam “the dirtiest in American sports since the Nazis were shilling for Max Schmeling as representative of their vile theories of blood.”

The undisputed heavyweight champion of the world—at a time when that title had significance—was turning his back on mainstream religion, politics, and commerce. He was making a powerful statement in the turbulent ’60s as race riots swept the cities, voter-registration workers were attacked and murdered in the rural South, and the Vietnam War was expanding. That statement was interpreted—by both supporters and critics—to mean that Ali was an outspoken agent of change. Often in ways he did not fully understand and might not have approved of if he had, Ali was increasingly seen as the mouth and muscle of the American counterculture.

Ali went into training for his rematch with Liston amid rumors of the first fight being fixed, including a scenario in which the Muslims had threatened to kill Liston if he hurt their man. Another rumor had the Mafia ordering Liston to tank the fight since he had a return-bout clause, which promised a larger payday.

The 15 months between the two title fights with Liston were tumultuous for the new champ. He married a pretty Chicago cocktail waitress, Sonji Roi, a single mother a year older than he.

The marriage was brief; Roi was not a Muslim and she had plans of her own, which included weaning her husband from the sect.

The divorce was one example of Elijah Muhammad’s hold on Ali. Another was Ali’s choice of the sect leader over his “big brother” Malcolm.

When Ali and Malcolm crossed paths in Ghana in the spring of 1964, the “little brother” not only snubbed Malcolm, he mocked his new beard and “funny white robe” to a New York Times correspondent. He added: “Man, he’s gone. Nobody listens to that Malcolm anymore.” According to Marable, these were words “he would later regret.”

I’m sure Marable was right. Talking to Ali about the incident on several occasions years later, I found him at a rare loss for words. He just didn’t want to talk about it. He mumbled something about being wrong, being young, being afraid. He would tell his biographer Thomas Hauser that “what Malcolm saw was right, and after he left us, we went his way anyway.”

Malcolm was deeply hurt by Ali turning away from him. I think he must also have known that their friendship offered a certain level of physical protection. As long as he was under the champ’s aegis, he would not be punished for his Black Muslim apostasy.

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm was gunned down in a Harlem ballroom where he was about to make a speech for his new organization. That night there was a fire in Ali’s apartment, and he briefly went into hiding, saying that he thought he had been targeted, too.

Three months later, Malcolm’s murder was the shadow over Ali’s first title defense, the rematch with Liston. Rumors of a carload of gunmen from New York heading toward Lewiston, Maine, to avenge Malcolm by shooting Ali made police officers, reporters, and fans jittery. But the closed-circuit-television promoters were probably thrilled that their ticket sales would soar if fans anticipated a title fight and an assassination attempt. And they added to the spectacle by announcing a one-night, $1 million life-insurance policy on Ali.

On fight night, the security was ludicrous. Troops of cops searched women’s handbags while local kids climbed into the shabby ice-hockey arena through the windows. Liston seemed the least concerned of all. “They coming to kill him, right?” he said.

The fight officially lasted one minute, 52 seconds, some of which was because of confusion in the ring. In that first and only round, Ali tagged Liston on the jaw with a short straight right — his third good punch — that knocked Liston down. At that point the referee, the former heavyweight champion Jersey Joe Walcott, lost control of the bout. Ali was not immediately sent to a neutral corner. The timekeeper seemed to lose the count. Liston was down, all right, but was he really out? Some called it the “phantom punch” because they never saw it. Others claim it was the perfect punch. I was at ringside, sitting beside Howard Cosell, who had a TV monitor. We watched the punch over and over until we thought we saw it.

It wasn’t a bad metaphor for the emerging image of Ali, a 23-year-old holy child, simple and complicated, on his way to becoming the most recognizable face on the planet. If you looked at him hard enough and long enough he would come into focus as whatever it was you wanted him to be.

With the unbeatable Liston beaten, Ali set out to establish himself as the indisputable champion by knocking off all contenders. First on the list was former champ Floyd Patterson. Patterson approached the fight as a crusade for Christianity and America. Ali had returned from a trip to Africa saying he was “not no American. I’m a black man.” He inveighed against “the spooks and ghosts” of the white man’s religion that enslaved black folks by promising them “pie in the sky when you die by and by,” thus distracting them from trying to “get it down on the ground while you’re still around.”

Patterson declared, “The image of a Black Muslim as a world heavyweight champion disgraces the sport and the nation. Cassius Clay must be beaten and the Black Muslim scourge removed from boxing.” It was the invoking of his slave name that particularly riled Ali.

The social, political, economic, and cultural winds swirling around the Ali-Patterson fight were briefly stilled by the disgusting exhibition of the fight itself. Patterson was game, but he had no chance. Ali mocked and humiliated and punished Patterson. The crowd called for the ref to stop the slaughter, or for Ali to be merciful and knock out his opponent. But Ali just kept jabbing and jabbering, “No contest, get me a contender … boop, boop, boop … watch it, Floyd.” The referee finally stopped the 15-round fight in the 12th.

By now, Ali had settled in to the personae that would shape the perception of him for years. For the government, he was a dangerous example of an anti-establishment sports hero just as it was depending on the loyalty of American youth to support an expanding war. Conservative working-class patriots, the pool that has traditionally supplied so many soldiers, called Ali a coward and an ingrate. College boys and antiwar liberals revered him as a brave rebel. Radicals, like Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, saw him as a rousing example of the “autonomous” black man who is beyond government control. The boxing establishment, meanwhile, was concerned that Ali was stepping outside its control.

The contenders who lined up to fight Ali didn’t necessarily look more promising than Patterson. It didn’t seem as if the young champ was about to be defeated by a modern “great white hope” (of any color) in the ring. He was going to have to be defeated outside it. And he gave the opening.

Some people wondered if Ali’s 1-Y deferment in 1964 (“not qualified under current standards for service in the armed forces”) had been a gift from the Louisville draft board to the local pillars who owned his contract, and if the sudden reclassification to 1-A in 1966 was a reaction to that contract’s end. Others speculated that Ali had been deemed mentally unstable or homosexual to earn the earlier classification, because he certainly seemed smart enough to serve.

As it turned out, those 1964 tests determined he wasn’t smart enough. Ali had struggled to answer the questions, especially the math, and his Army IQ was listed as 78, well below the passing grade. He was retested, and failed again. Two years later, Ali hadn’t suddenly become smarter. The Army had just lowered its standards to meet its quota of fresh young bodies.

The champ was humiliated. If he blithely told reporters, “I said I was the greatest, not the smartest,” he had always been embarrassed by a weak high-school academic record and poor reading skills. On several occasions, he admitted to me that he had never been able to complete an entire book, including the Koran.

That humiliation was the main reason he first said, “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.” He may have been the most quotable athlete of all time, and most of his utterances were joyous. But his most famous quote was explosively polarizing.

Three months after he poked Patterson apart, the country was pulling apart. On television that day, Feb. 17, 1966, Senate hearings raged over the war in Vietnam. Sharp political lines were being drawn, but Ali was oblivious. As a swarm of reporters descended on his rented Miami bungalow for his reaction to the reclassification, I watched his mood change over that long afternoon. It began with bewilderment and morphed into questioning.

As fellow Muslims, many of them World War II and Korean War vets, arrived, Ali grew more manic. They told him that cracker sergeants would see he was shipped to the front lines and snickered that they would drop grenades down his pants. News trucks continued to roll up. Interviewers, sensing his anger, provoked him further. “Do you know where Vietnam is?”

“Sure,” he mumbled, although he didn’t sound sure.

He shrugged. I would have shrugged, too. This went on and on. It was dusk when a newcomer with a mike asked the question for the hundredth time: “What do you think about the Vietcong?”

And that was it. “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.” The sound bite that would help define the ’60s, the headline that made him simultaneously hated and beloved—and that he would repeat in various versions and come to believe—was not on that day meant to be a political declaration. It was just the whiny response of a worn-out and exasperated young man.

The adverse reaction was so quick, it felt as though the politicians, the boxing commissions, and the older sportswriters had been lying in ambush waiting for that quote. The vaunted Red Smith wrote: “Squealing over the possibility that the military may call him up, Cassius makes himself as sorry a spectacle as those unwashed punks who picket and demonstrate against the war.”

Despite the storm, Ali was a busy champion, with seven more title defenses in 12 months. He said he didn’t want to go to jail for refusing to be drafted if his conscientious objector claim was denied, but the alternative—joining the Army and giving exhibitions for the troops—was worse. “What can you give me, America,” he said in a tone as bleak as the sky, “for turning down my religion? You want me to do what the white man says and go fight a war against some people I don’t know nothing about, get some freedom for some other people when my own can’t get theirs here?” His voice deepened. “Ah-leeee will return. My ghost will haunt all arenas. Twenty-five years old now. Make my comeback at 28. That’s not old. Whip ’em all.”

It would turn out to be his best prediction.

On April 28, 1967, Ali refused induction. Boxing commissioners, who are mostly political appointees, withdrew their recognition of his championship and refused to license him to fight in their state or municipality. Ten days later he was arrested and released on bail. Thus, he was effectively stripped of his livelihood before he was convicted of any crime. On June 20, after 20 minutes of deliberation, a jury did convict him. The judge imposed the maximum sentence: five years in jail and a $10,000 fine. He would go into exile, but never to prison.

That summer he married a tall, striking 17-year-old Muslim woman, Belinda Boyd, who changed her name to Khalilah Ali, and dropped out of public view. But his influence was growing. Athletes, particularly black athletes, were inspired by his story to stand up for equality in their sports and in the larger society. This was most dramatically epitomized by the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics, which derived much of its energy from what was seen as the persecution of Ali. While the movement began with black football players and track athletes, it would eventually influence the baseball players who demanded free agency and the white tennis players who forced an end to the sham of amateurism. Led by Billie Jean King, these tennis players fought for transparency and gender equality in prize money.

Whites who heard Ali on the college lecture circuit—his main source of income during his exile from the ring—were getting a window on social, political, and religious issues, as well as on black attitudes. Blacks were finding a symbolic leader. Ali himself, able for the first time to concentrate on current events and prodded by the questions asked by his audiences, began to more fully understand his views on the war in Vietnam, religious persecution and civil rights.

And he was making some large, sweeping statements. On being banned from the ring, he said: “You read about these things in the dictatorship countries, where a man don’t go along with this or that and he is completely not allowed to work or to earn a decent living.”

His take on race relations might have been considered simplistic, but it was direct and strong: “The white race attacks black people. They don’t ask what’s our religion, what’s our belief? They just start whupping heads … So we don’t want to live with the white man, that’s all.”

What he wanted, he said, was a black homeland. “We were brought here 400 years ago for a job. Why don’t we get out and build our own nation and quit begging for jobs?”

During this period, the sportscaster Cosell was critical in keeping Ali’s name alive. He interviewed him on TV and used him as a commentator on fights. Without ever directly endorsing Ali’s opinions, he defended Ali’s right to have them. As a lawyer, Cosell maintained that Ali’s constitutional rights had been violated when his title was stripped without due process. His support helped Ali through a difficult time.

I was present at one poignant reminder of how long a fall from a throne can be. Ali was the mystery guest on What’s My Line?, a popular TV show in which blindfolded panelists tried to deduce a guest’s identity with yes-or-no questions. It was his second appearance on the show. In 1965, his identity had been discerned in minutes. In 1969, he remained a mystery all the way to the buzzer.

It was the starriest fight night in Madison Square Garden history. Frank Sinatra was at ringside, shooting pictures for LIFE magazine, and Burt Lancaster was behind a microphone, broadcasting to the closed-circuit-TV audience. Ethel Kennedy, Hugh Hefner, Marcello Mastroianni, Abbie Hoffman … they were only the supporting cast.

The stars were two undefeated heavyweights, each with a legitimate claim to the championship. Nothing like this had ever happened before.

Each fighter was guaranteed $2.5 million, a record, but ultimately a bargain for the promoters. The Garden was sold out (the top ticket price, $150, was unprecedented, and the the re-sale market was getting $1,000). It has been estimated, perhaps somewhat extravagantly, that 300 million people worldwide saw the fight and that it grossed more than $18 million.

Beyond the glitter and the gold was an intense drama. Some saw The Fight as Ali’s triumphant return from exile to reclaim his rightful throne. Others felt that Frazier, honest workman and blue-collar patriot, would close the book on the treasonous con man.

“After a while, how you stood on Ali became a political and generational litmus test,” Bryant Gumbel told Hauser. “He was somebody we could hold on to; somebody who was ours. And fairly or unfairly, because he was opposing Ali, Joe Frazier became the symbol of our oppressors.”

Frazier was also the standard-bearer for the boxing establishment. In a press release for The Fight, the Garden declared of him, “Not since the days of Joe Louis and Ray Robinson and Floyd Patterson has a black man brought so much dignity to boxing.”

The Fight was possible because the mood of the country had changed during Ali’s exile from the ring. By 1970, more and more Americans felt free to say that they, too, had nothing against them Vietcong. Ali’s appeal of his conviction for draft evasion had reached the Supreme Court. Based on other decisions, there were indications that he would win. Meanwhile, the radicals’ cry of “Black Power!” had been translated by truly powerful blacks—civil-rights leaders, politicians, entertainers, business owners—into clout.

Ali, inactive for three and a half years, had beaten a solid white heavyweight Jerry Quarry and needed one more warm-up. A match in New York, at the Garden, would be the perfect run-up to The Fight. But at first the New York State Athletic Commission refused to license him. Not until the NAACP Legal Defense Fund prepared an eye-opening list of convicted felons who had been licensed to fight by the commission did a federal court order that politically appointed body to issue Ali a license.

On December 7, 1970, six weeks after stopping Quarry, Ali scored a 15th-round technical knockout over Oscar Bonavena at the Garden. Because he knocked Bonavena down three times in the last round, people tended to forget how much trouble he’d had with the tough Argentine power puncher through the previous 14. Was he really ready for The Fight—and the second act of his career—scheduled for March 8, 1971?

Verbally, he was. Ali started with a poem that ended, “This might shock and amaze ya but I’m gonna destroy Joe Frazier.” Then he really cranked up the vicious jabs. He said, “Anybody black who thinks Joe Frazier can whup me is an Uncle Tom.” And then, “Joe Frazier is too ugly to be champ. Joe Frazier is too dumb to be champ.”

There is no way to justify Ali calling Frazier a tool of the white man, much less mocking his dark skin and thick lips by describing him as a “gorilla.” Defending the taunts as the routine ridicule of the ghetto, made no sense coming from a self-righteous religionist of Ali’s grandiosity. The derision is even more despicable if it was merely a means to boost ticket sales, putting commerce before decency. No wonder Frazier carried a grudge for years.

“I never liked Ali,” said Frazier long afterward. He admitted that it hurt to be demeaned by a man he had tried to help during the exile years, even lending him money.

Ali understood that winning would not be enough. He would have to forge beyond mere victory into the bloody hellstorm of Frazier’s fury. He would have to prove, at any cost, that he was as much man as Smokin’ Joe, that he could stand toe to toe and slug it out with the slugger. Ali was making a devil’s bargain: a finesse fighter who had relied on speed and deception—and who was clearly rusty—was going to mix it up with a fearsome banger willing to take three punches to deliver one.

It was not until years later, when Ferdie Pacheco, his longtime doctor, talked to Hauser, that we came to realize just how much Ali had lost in his exile. His legs and hands had suffered the most. Before each bout, Pacheco injected his fighter’s fists with drugs, including cortisone, to numb the pain. Where once Ali’s quick, dancing movements had been his first line of defense, now he could be hit.

That was a mixed blessing. Ali learned he could take a punch. He became braver—and lazier—allowing opponents and even sparring partners to hit him. He said he was toughening up his body and head. But he was also absorbing lifetime damage, which was about to be accelerated during 15 of the most grueling, pitiless rounds that the sweet science had ever seen.

The crowd had expected Frazier to come out smokin’, trying to bull Ali around the ring, offering up his own rugged face in sacrifice to an eventual victory. He did not disappoint. Ali’s strategy was a shock, though. Everyone had expected him to dance, to jab and spin, stick and run, to make Frazier chase him. But he did not run. After the first two rounds, Ali planted his feet and fought. His idea was to stand against the ropes and let Frazier bang against his arms and shoulders until he was all punched out. Ali underestimated Frazier’s strength, conditioning, and sheer will.

In the third, Frazier landed a solid left to Ali’s face. Ali shook it off, then told Frazier, “God wants you to lose tonight.” Frazier mumbled back, “Tell your God he’s in the wrong house tonight.”

Through the middle rounds, Frazier drove the momentum of the fight, moving inexorably forward to hammer Ali with his left hook. Ali scored with jabs to Frazier’s face. “It was horrible watching their features change,” said said the referee, Arthur Mercante.

Frazier dominated most of the later rounds. In the 15th, he landed a left hook on Ali’s jaw. Ali went down. He jumped right up, but by then it didn’t matter. The three official scorecards were unanimous in the decision—11 rounds for Frazier and 4 for Ali; 9–6; and 8–6, 1 even.

The physical toll was evident. Frazier’s face was misshapen and skinned. Ali, for the first time in his career, looked as if he’d been in a fight. His face was lumpy and blotched, his body marked and sore.

Pacheco remembered that back in the dressing room he had to help clothe Ali, who was “like a drunk; he just lay there limp.” At a hospital, X-rays of Ali’s swollen jaw were negative, but Pacheco wanted him to stay overnight for observation. Ali refused because “he didn’t want anybody saying Joe Frazier put him in the hospital.” Frazier, meanwhile, was admitted for internal injuries.

Both men won that night. Frazier had emerged from Ali’s shadow. He was the undisputed champion. Ali’s “heart,” his courage in the ring, had never been tested; now it was no longer suspect. There was no question that he could take it. That, combined with people’s grudging admiration for his sincerity, his willingness to sacrifice money and career for principle, started him on a path to widespread public redemption. (Three months later, there was legal redemption. The Supreme Court reversed his 1967 draft-evasion conviction.)

The morning after The Fight, a serene expression on his beaten face, Ali entertained waves of media in his hotel room. They all seemed more concerned about the loss than he did. I stayed for hours in that room, marveling at his mood. Didn’t he know he was over, that from here on he would be considered an “opponent,” a has-been? How could he be so … philosophical? I thought about the first time I’d met him, before the Liston fight in Miami, when he told a reporter that if Liston won, Ali would be out on the sidewalk the next day hollering, “No man ever beat me twice.”

During a lull between waves of reporters, I reminded him of what he had said that day. He nodded, closed his eyes, and began to chant, “Fight him again … I’ll get by Joe this time … I’ll straighten this out … I’m ready this time … You hear me, Joe? … YOU HEAR ME? … Joe, if you beat me this time, you’ll really be the greatest.”

Frazier, though, remained undisputed heavyweight champion for less than two years. Another unbeatable monster had arisen. In 1973, George Foreman knocked him down six times in the first two rounds before their fight was stopped. Foreman—huge, implacable—was now the champ. It was generally assumed that the fighter who would beat Big George was still a child.

Ali, who was 31, had hoped for a rematch with Frazier to reclaim his title. Now his future looked like an endless procession of good-but-not-great fighters he could dominate for excellent paydays and very good fighters who would climb over him on their way to Foreman. The conventional wisdom was that Ali’s dream of a return to the throne was dead.

Nevertheless, he was busy, with 14 fights in three years. He beat Patterson and Quarry again, as well as his old boyhood pal and sparring partner Jimmy Ellis. He took on all comers, losing only once, to Ken Norton, who broke his jaw. Six months later he avenged the loss. And he did fight Frazier again, at the Garden, this time winning a unanimous 12-round decision. People close to Ali noticed that he was taking more punishment.

Although he was no longer the champ and his life with Khalilah and their four children was a frequent subject of feature-story idealization and his own rhapsodizing, Ali was relentlessly promiscuous. Pacheco described him as “bountiful in his pelvic generosity.” He would often have sex with a half-dozen women in the same day, according to members of his inner circle. Ali didn’t want to disappoint any of them; in his accounting, his pelvic generosity wasn’t much different from his munificence toward autograph seekers. Members of the Ali Circus noted that the women he pulled into the tent were of all sizes, ages, and degrees of beauty, although, they all maintained, he never had sex with white women. Ali told Hauser that his promiscuity was wrong but understandable. He was just so pretty!

Eventually, there was no one left to fight except Foreman, against whom, boxing experts agreed, he stood no chance. Foreman was Liston-like, boorish and brutish, in those days before he found God and became a cuddly and lovable grillmeister. But there was one more dangerous character on the boxing scene: Don King, an ex-con from Cleveland. King, who had killed two men in the line of his duty as a leading numbers banker, was a familiar figure at fights before he began promoting them. Tough, wily, intimidating—and with an electrified Afro and gift of gab (his catchphrase: “Only in America!”)—King worked his way into Ali’s circle. He was adept at playing the race card. Why would a black boxer fight for white promoters when he could give business to one of his own kind?

Litigious and shameless, King settled cases with Ali, Mike Tyson, and numerous other fighters after they sued him for cheating them out of money and contractual rights. But that was only after he made his bones as a promoter in 1974 by pulling off one of boxing’s most storied events, the Rumble in the Jungle. Who better to deal with Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator of Zaire? King negotiated a record $10 million purse for Foreman and Ali, guaranteed by the Zairean government.

And so it came about, like the telling of a tall tale, in the dark stillness of the hour before dawn, beneath a waning African moon. Foreman, the favorite, shrugged his cannonball shoulders and stared balefully at his challenger. Now 25, he had never been knocked off his feet in a prizefight, and he was heavier than Ali, who at 32 was considered in the twilight of his career.

But as they met in the middle of the ring, Ali smiled and softly said, “You have heard of me since you were young. You’ve been following me since you were a little boy. Now you must meet me, your master.”

Millions around the world tuned in on closed-circuit television. (In the stadium in Kinshasa thousands began to chant, “Ali, bomaye”—Ali, kill him.

As Ali waited for the opening round, Bundini’s voice cut through the swelling roar of the crowd. “Remember what I said: God set it up this way. This is the closing of the book. The king gained his throne by killing a monster, and the king will regain his throne by killing a bigger monster. This is the closing of the book.”

At the bell, the two big men charged to the center of the ring. They paused, then warily began to circle each other. Ali delivered the first punch, a solid right to Foreman’s head. Foreman lunged forward. Ali grabbed him around the neck and pushed his head down. Foreman was enraged. No one had ever hit him so hard, so early, then dared to test his strength by grappling with him.

A few minutes later, Foreman drove Ali into a corner and began to pound him. The crowd groaned. Ali was trapped. Experts at ringside buzzed. Ali wasn’t dancing, he was merely bobbing from side to side. Foreman had prepared to battle a moving target. A mechanical fighter who couldn’t adjust easily to unexpected tactics, he just kept poking away at his stationary opponent, landing blows where they could do no real damage. The ropes Ali leaned on helped cushion the force of the punches. Except for a hard shot to his head in the second round, he didn’t seem to be getting hurt. And when he struck back, quick jabs and rights connected with Foreman’s head. Ali taunted the champion: “You are just an amateur, George. Show me something. Hit me hard.”

By the fifth round, Foreman’s face was swollen from the jabs and he stood on heavy, slow mummy legs. Frustrated, he decided to go all out for a knockout. He unleashed a barrage of thundering blows, his best shots, crunching rights and wicked left hooks. And still Ali stayed upright, leaning against the ropes. Foreman was breathing hard, his punches finally losing power, his mind losing confidence. He paused.

And Ali pounced. His hands a blur, he fired punch after punch, thunderbolts. One right cross almost turned Foreman’s head around.

In the eighth, Ali unleashed what some consider his finest punch ever. Saved up since he was 12 for the thief who stole his bicycle, he now used it for the pretender on his throne. First, three good rights and a left. Then the bomb, a right-hand sledgehammer.

Foreman leaned forward from his waist as if he were folding up. Then he pitched onto the canvas. Ali had killed the monster, closed the book, and regained his championship.

Then he fainted.

Back on his feet in seconds, he yelled at the press, “What did I tell you?”

Ten years after Clay beat Liston, America responded to the champion Ali. There were parades in Chicago and New York, and a visit to the White House.

“The championship,” Ali said one night in a mellow mood, “is top of the world.”

And did he ever enjoy being back on top. He would wander out of his hotel or stop his car to suddenly appear on a city street or in a shopping mall, watching out of the corners of his eyes as passersby stopped, turned, did a double take, and whispered, “Is that…?” and then, convinced by his welcoming smile that indeed it was, stampede toward him shouting, “Ah-leeee.” Ali opened his arms to them all.

I was with him once on a high-school football field near Daytona Beach. Ali had just finished a joke-a-poke exhibition match for charity, and now he was back in the motor home he used as a dressing room. He shooed everyone out, then leaned from the doorway to survey the crowd until he had picked out three foxy young women, whom he invited in. A few minutes later, two emerged from the trailer’s entrance. Ali grinned at us as he closed the door again.

I watched as the motor home began to jiggle on its springs. The champ was floating and stinging. “Don’t write about this,” said Dundee. One of the press agents added, “Not if you ever want to interview him again.”

I gave the ultimatum a few minutes’ thought on the flight home. After more than a decade, my access would be over. That would be too bad. I felt a little sad. Goodbye, Ali, thanks for the ride.

The Times Magazine titled the piece “King of All Kings.” It ended with the jiggling motor home.

I should have known better. The next time we saw each other, a few months later, Ali rushed over and said, “King of all kings. Right!” Then he invited me to come listen to him some more.

He defended his title three times before meeting Frazier in the third of their classic matches, the Thrilla in Manila, another King promotional masterpiece, this one for the dictators of the Philippines, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. Many people regard the 1975 fight as not only the best of the three but one of the best of all time.

A head-turning presence in Manila before the event was Veronica Porche (later often spelled Porsche, with her blessing), a willowy beauty Ali had met during the American promotional tour for the Rumble. In Manila, Ali took her to a reception at the Presidential Palace, and when President Marcos said, “Your wife is quite beautiful,” Ali responded, “Your wife is beautiful, too.” The ace Newsweek correspondent Peter Bonventre, who had been struggling with whether or not to mention Veronica, now felt he had no choice.

Twenty-four hours after the piece and its newspaper follow-ups appeared, Khalilah was on her way to Manila. She stayed just long enough to scream at her husband, throw hotel-room furniture, and threaten to break Veronica’s back if she ever saw her again, before storming out and returning home.

The actual fight was even more grueling, 14 rounds in late-morning temperatures that approached 100 degrees. Ali started strongly, then lay on the ropes through the middle stages as Frazier piled up points. In the waning rounds, Ali sprang back and took over. The bout was stopped before the 15th, after Frazier’s trainer looked at the swollen-shut eyes of his fighter and refused to allow him to continue. Ali was on the brink of quitting too. Later, he’d say that the fight was the closest thing to death he’d ever experienced. “They were fighting,” said the Newark Star-Ledger ��s Jerry Izenberg, “for the heavyweight championship of each other.”

As expected, Khalilah and Ali divorced, and he married Veronica, with whom he had two daughters—including one, Laila, who would grow up to be a boxer like her father. In the next few years Ali published a mediocre, intermittently truthful autobiography, The Greatest, and starred in its movie version; appeared as an ally of Superman in a DC comic; and endorsed a roach killer. There were also some forgettable fights.

By then, Pacheco was worried not only about Ali’s physical condition but about his psychological state as well. “Ali is now at the dangerous mental point where his heart and mind are no longer in it,” he said. “It’s just a payday. It’s almost as if an actor had played his role too long. He’s just mouthing the words.”

But actors don’t routinely get smacked in the head. After a brutal fight with Earnie Shavers, a journeyman he once would have handled deftly, Ali said in a slurred voice, “Got hit so hard my ancestors in Africa turned over in their graves.” And then, in a stunning upset, he lost his title to Leon Spinks, an Olympic light-heavyweight champion with only seven professional bouts. Spinks was shorter and lighter than Ali. No one, including Ali, had given Spinks much of a chance; the champ showed up pudgy and unprepared to box 15 rounds with a man 12 years younger. Spinks won by a split decision, but he won.

Seven months later, Ali took the title back from Spinks, making him the first to capture the heavyweight championship three times. It was time to close the book. To the great relief of those who cared about him, he retired.

Ali in retirement was depressed by his deteriorating physical condition and the loss of adoring attention. He did not become the world’s greatest movie actor—although he did star in a TV miniseries, Freedom Road, with Kris Kristofferson, in which he played an ex-slave who became a U.S. senator after the Civil War. The New York Times review began, “A glaring distinction of ‘Freedom Road’ is that it takes Muhammad Ali, certainly one of the more vibrant personalities of this century, and makes him dull.”

Nor did he become the world’s greatest businessman. Ali participated in a number of shaky financial ventures, and nothing much came of any of them. Worse were the shady deals in which his name was used. In one, an Ali associate made phone calls mimicking his voice in an attempt to initiate legislation that would enrich them both.

Ali’s hopes of becoming a roving champion for peace and good will were derailed by an actual official assignment. President Jimmy Carter sent him to Africa to gather support for a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, a response to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Ali was surprised and hurt by his reception in Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, and Senegal, where local politicians and journalists asked why he was letting himself be used as a Cold War propaganda tool. When he did a diplomatic shuffle, allowing that he might be wrong and needed to rethink his mission, the State Department quickly shut him down and sent him home.

Financial pressures made Ali vulnerable to King, who still saw a cash cow fat for slaughter. In 1980, King matched him with the reigning champion, Larry Holmes. Even Holmes, who had once been his sparring partner, had misgivings. He loved Ali. Ali looked fine. But his gray hairs were dyed black, and a slimmer silhouette was the result of a debilitating diet; after ballooning to 250 pounds he had too rapidly dropped to 217. In the ring, he was sluggish. Holmes won every round until Herbert Muhammad and Dundee stopped the fight after the 10th. Sylvester Stallone—who had modeled his character Rocky on an Ali opponent, Chuck Wepner—said it was “like watching an autopsy on a man who’s still alive.” Ali fought once more, in December 1981, in the Bahamas, against Trevor Berbick. He lost the decision in 10 dreary rounds. There were more medical tests, mostly inconclusive. His trembling and slurring were attributed to Parkinson’s syndrome, not disease, as if no one wanted to deal with such a formidable diagnosis. The various theories of causation included exposure to toxic chemicals in his training camp in Deer Lake, Pa. Few beyond Pacheco would discuss the obvious: the devastating impact of so many traumatic blows to the head over so many years.

The joyride was over. Brown and then Ali’s loyal cook, Lana Shabazz, died. Cosell renounced professional boxing in 1982 as brutal and sleazy. When Cosell died in 1995, Ali told the Associated Press: “I have been interviewed by many people, but I enjoyed interviews with Howard the best.” Ali now seemed like no more than a chapter in history, a subject for “Where are they now?” features or all-time rankings of heavyweights. (He was rarely listed lower than third, and usually at No. 1.)

The comeback began in 1982, very privately. Ali was 40 and suffering through a difficult parting with Veronica when he was reunited with Yolanda Williams, a 25-year-old sales rep at Kraft working on her MBA at the University of Louisville who had had a crush on Ali since she was 5 years old. Lonnie, as Williams is known, was disturbed by his condition at their first meeting. “He stumbled on the street,” she told Hauser. “He was despondent. He wasn’t the Muhammad I knew.”

She quit her job, moved to Los Angeles, and transferred to UCLA. And she began to take care of Ali. In 1986 they married. Lonnie became a Muslim and the full-time manager and curator of the man and the legend. She helped him take charge of his finances and reemerge as a public figure.

Their first major project together, Hauser’s bestselling oral history, was published in 1991. It put Ali back on the celebrity radar. The critical and commercial success spawned more Ali-Hauser books and a procession of Ali appearances that slackened only as his stamina waned.

Five years later, with a trembling hand, he lit the torch to open the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. One of the millions of hearts touched that night belonged to Foreman, who told Stephen Brunt in the book Facing Ali, “Ali really kind of elevated himself for me when he did the torch thing. Someone has something like Parkinson’s, they’ll just stay in the house and hide. They’ll say, ‘I don’t want them to see me like this.’

“I felt so proud of him. Muhammad Ali did a lot for the world when he did that. You’ll never know how much he did for people who generally hide themselves. To see him do it and not be ashamed.”

In 1999, Ali became the first boxer to grace a Wheaties box. In 2003, the art publisher Taschen produced a $7,500 book, a 75-pound valentine to his life and legend. In 2005, the Muhammad Ali Center opened in downtown Louisville and President George W. Bush, calling Ali the greatest boxer of all time, hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck. A year later an entertainment company, CKX, announced it had paid “$50 million for an 80 percent stake in Mr. Ali’s name, image and likeness,” according to The New York Times. The company also controls Elvis’s image.

Hauser saw many of these moments as eroding the legacy. He was offended (as was I) by the way the 2001 movie Ali, with Will Smith in the title role, “sanitized” the man and “rounded off the rough edges” of his tumultuous journey. There was a backlash to the makeover of Ali’s image, mostly in recent years from right-of-center critics who saw him as the false icon of hypocritical liberals. Even a well-known African-American academic, Gerald Early, editor of The Muhammad Ali Reader, tried to reduce his stature. He wrote: “Ali, despite all the talk of his brilliance, was not a thoughtful man. He was not conversant with ideas. Indeed, he hadn’t a single idea in his head, really. What he had was the faith of a true believer … a grand public stage, an extraordinary historical moment, amazing athletic gifts, and good looks.”

Such criticism provided a counterpoint to the hagiography of the movie, the Ali Center, and his corporate sponsors. The metamorphosis of Cassius Clay (brash and uneducated, yet a daring anti-establishment warrior) into the late-life Muhammad Ali (nonthreatening, passive, a wounded champion of peace and kindness) was hard to explain to a generation that had never seen him at his fiery best. It was easier to trot out a one-dimensional saint for commercial and ceremonial occasions than to teach young people about a great athlete of principle who taught the world to be proud and brave.

Ali himself was rather modest in his demands on posterity. In a 1975 Playboy interview, he offered how he would like to be remembered: “As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him and who helped as many of his people as he could … I guess I’d settle for being remembered only as a great boxing champion who became a preacher and a champion of his people. And I wouldn’t even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.”

For half a century, whether or not we wanted to go, Muhammad Ali took us, Beatles and all, for a wondrous ride in which we made him a symbol of the resistance to war, of the racial struggle, of the individual standing up to establishment pressure.

Along the way he made us laugh, curse, cheer, and cry. Most important, he made us brave.

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The Best Biography

Muhammad Ali (American Professional Boxer) Biography

February 8, 2024 by Tanisha Leave a Comment

Muhammad Ali was an American professional boxer and social activist who was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on January 17, 1942, and passed away in Scottsdale, Arizona, on June 3, 2016. Ali, who successfully defended the heavyweight belt 19 times, became the first fighter to win the title three times in a row.

One of the best boxers in history, Muhammad Ali was the first to capture the heavyweight title in the world three times. He was also well-known for his refusal to be drafted into the American Army during the Vietnam War and for his social message of black pride and resistance to white dominance.

Table of Contents

Muhammad Ali Biography

Childhood & early life.

• Muhammad Ali was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Cassius Marcellus Clay, Sr and Odessa O’Grady. He was the eldest of the two sons of this couple. His father earned a living by painting billboards and signs.
• Interestingly, it was a Louisville police officer who changed the fate of young Clay. The latter was enraged at a thief who robbed his bicycle and told police officer, Joe Martin that he wished to whip the robber. It was then that Martin suggested him to learn boxing first.
• Martin served as his early coach, teaching him the technicalities of the game. In the last four years of his amateur career, he was trained by cutman Chuck Bodak.
• In his first ever fight which took place in 1954, he won by a split decision. Following this, he won the 1956  Golden Gloves  tournament for novices in the light heavyweight class.
• In 1959, he won the  National Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions , as well as the  Amateur Athletic Union’s  national title for the light-heavyweight division.
• His outstanding achievements in his amateur years won him a seat in the US  Olympic  boxing team in 1960. He won the first three bouts to face Zbigniew Pietrzkowski from Poland. Crushing the latter, he earned his first gold at the event. The  Olympic  win garnered him a  hero  status.
• His heroic wins, majority of which were through knockouts, made him the top contender for Sunny Liston’s title. As such, a fight was scheduled between the two in February 1964, in Miami.
• While Liston was the reigning champion, Clay seemed to be the underdog at the event, more so because his last fights against Jones and Cooper displayed lack of skills.
• Even before the fight began, the two turned the pre-fight weigh-in into a circus, demeaning and defaming each other, an incident which was the first-of-its-kind in the history of boxing. Enraged by the disparaging comments, Liston looked for a quick knockout but lost the match in the sixth round.
• Defeating Liston, he became the then youngest boxer to assume the title from a reigning heavyweight champion. Meanwhile, in 1964, he changed his name from Cassius Marcellus Clay to Muhammad Ali, converting to Islam.
• Following the conversion, a rematch was arranged between Muhammad Ali and Liston. However, the second match bore the same result as the first one, except for the fact that it lasted for just about two minutes.
• His second title defence was against Floyd Patterson, who twice lost to Liston in first round knockouts. The match continued for 12 rounds post which he was declared the winner.
• In the following years, Muhammad Ali won a match each against George Chuvalo, Henry Cooper, Brian London, and Karl Mildenberger. His match against Cleveland Williams in the  Houston Astrodome  received much limelight, which he won convincingly in the third round via technical knockout (TKO).
• In 1967, he stood against Terrell, who was the unbeaten heavyweight champion for five years. The fight prolonged for 15 rounds, in which both the players displayed tremendous skill and prowess. Muhammad Ali however won the fight in a unanimous decision.
• Muhammad Ali was stripped of his title as he refused to render his services to the army during the  Vietnam War.  Not only was his boxing license suspended, he was also sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison along with a fine.
• After his period of imprisonment, he made a comeback with a fight against Jerry Quarry on October 26, 1970.
• Muhammad Ali was chosen as the top contender against heavyweight champion Joe Frazier. Nicknamed the  Fight of the Century , it created a stir as the two undefeated opponents were against each other. The fight took place on March 8, 1971. Though the initial rounds were neck to neck, in the latter Frazier took an advantageous lead and eventually won the contest. This was Ali’s first ever loss since his professional debut.
• In 1973, Ali lost the second fight of his career to Ken Norton, who broke his jaw. In their second bout, Ali won a controversial decision against Norton, thereby earning the right to fight against Joe Frazier, who had recently lost his title to George Foreman.
• The Ali-Frazier rematch took place on January 28, 1974, and Ali won the bout.
• Frazier’s defeat led to a title fight between Ali and heavyweight champion George Foreman. The bout took place on October 30, 1974, and Ali was considered an underdog. However, the result of the match turned in Muhammad Ali’s favor as Foreman failed to make it to the count at the end of the eighth round.
• Year 1975 witnessed one of the toughest fights as Ali fought against Frazier in a match that was titled  Thrilla in Manila.  Lasting for 14 rounds, the former was declared the winner.
• Post the fight against Frazier, Ali’s career graph observed a decline as he was defeated by Leon Spinks and knocked out by Larry Holmes. After losing his heavyweight title to Trevor Berbick, he retired from boxing in 1979.

Awards & Achievements

• Muhammad Ali was honored with a number of titles including,  The Greatest, Fighter of the Year, Sportsman of the Year, Sportsman of the Century,  and  Sports Personality of the Century.
• He was the proud recipient of the  Presidential Citizens Medal  and  Presidential Medal of Freedom,  which he received in 2005, from the then President George W. Bush.
• He was inducted into the  International Boxing Hall of Fame.  He is even honored with a star on the  Hollywood Walk of Fame  at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard.

Personal Life & Legacy

• Muhammad Ali married four times in his lifetime. His partners were Sonji Roi, Belinda Boyd, Veronica Porsche, and Yolanda. Overall, he had seven daughters and two sons from his alliances. Nico Ali Walsh, Ali’s grandson, is also a boxer.
• He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1984. The disease was mainly a result of the head injuries that he sustained during his boxing career.
• He died of respiratory complications on June 3, 2016, in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, at the age of 74.

Muhammad Ali Boxing Career

Muhammad Ali is universally recognized as one of the best boxers of all time. He began his career when he was 12 years ago and soon, he became a professional boxer in 1960 and quickly rose to prominence with his stunning victory over Sonny Liston in 1964. Over the course of his career, Ali won 56 out of 61 bouts, including 37 knockouts. He also became the first boxer to win the heavyweight title three times.

 In addition to his boxing prowess, Ali was also known for his charismatic personality and social activism. He was a passionate opponent of prejudice and injustice, and he used his platform to promote peace and understanding.

What was Muhammad Ali’s boxing style?

Muhammad Ali was known for his “ float like a butterfly , sting like a bee” style of boxing, which involved quick footwork and movement around the ring combined with fast, powerful punches. He was also known for his excellent defensive skills and ability to take punishment.

Muhammad Ali Records

Muhammad Ali’s boxing record includes 56 wins, 5 losses, and 37 knockouts. He won the world heavyweight title three times, and his list of notable opponents includes Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, and Ken Norton.

Muhammad Ali as Olympics Championship

Muhammad Ali was one of the greatest athletes of all time. He was a three-time world heavyweight boxing champion and an Olympic gold medallist.  

When Muhammad Ali was just 18 years old, he won a gold medal in the light heavyweight division at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. He won the gold medal after beating three-time European champion  Zbigniew Pietrzykowski  in during the final Match. This made him the first American boxer to win an Olympic gold medal since 1904.

Ali’s victory was especially significant because it came at a time when racial tensions were high in the United States. He was hailed as a hero by many African Americans and became an icon of the Civil Rights movement.

After winning the Olympic gold medal, Ali turned professional and went on to become one of the most successful boxers in history. He remains an inspiration to athletes and others around the world.

Muhammad Ali Retirement

In 1981, Muhammad Ali announced his retirement from boxing. He had been the world heavyweight champion for nearly a decade and was widely considered to be the greatest boxer of all time. Ali’s retirement came as a surprise to many, as he was still in his physical prime. However, Ali cited his declining health as the primary reason for his decision.

He had been diagnosed with  Parkinson’s disease  several years earlier, and it had begun to take a toll on his body. Ali continued to be an active public figure after his retirement, using his platform to raise awareness about Parkinson’s disease and other causes he cared about.

Muhammad Ali Net worth

Muhammad Ali’s net worth at the time of his death was estimated to be around $80 million.

Controversy

Muhammad Ali was involved in several controversies during his career, including his refusal to be drafted into the Vietnam War and his public criticism of the war and the US government. He was also involved in numerous legal disputes over the years, including disputes over child support and alimony payments.

• Won  Kentucky Golden Gloves  titles six times in between 1955-60
• Became Olympics light heavyweight champion in 1960
• Twice won the  Amateur Athletic Union Championships  in 1959 and 1960
• Three times  Ring Heavyweight Champion : 1964, 1974, and 1978
• Three times  Lineal heavyweight champion : 1964, 1974 and 1978
• Two times  WBC Heavyweight champion :   1964 and 1974
• Martin Luther King Memorial Award  in 1970
• Three times  WBA heavyweight champion : 1964, 1974 and 1978
• Three times  NABF Heavyweight champion :   1970, 1971 and 1973
• Three times “ BWAA Fighter of the Year ”  in 1965, 1974 and 1975
• Selected as the “ Sportsman of the Year ” by famous American magazine ‘ Sports Illustrated ’ in 1974
• Named as the “ Athlete of the Year”  in 1974 by  Associated Press and  also selected as “ International Press Athlete of the Year “
• Honoured as BBC “ Sports Personality of the Century ” in 1999
• Presidential Citizens Medal  in 2001
• Presidential Medal of Freedom  in 2005
• Received  Double Helix Medal  in 2006

Also Read: George Foreman (American Professional Boxer) Biography

Muhammad Ali Health Issue

Muhammad Ali, the legendary boxer and three-time Heavyweight Champion of the World has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The diagnosis was made in 1984 after Ali began showing symptoms of the condition, and he has since been an outspoken advocate for awareness and research on the disease.

Parkinson’s disease  is a degenerative neurological disorder that affects the ability to control muscle movement. Symptoms of the disease can include tremors, slurred speech, and difficulty walking. The cause of the disease is unknown, but it is believed to be linked to a combination of genetic and environmental factors. There is no cure for Parkinson’s, but there are treatments available that can help manage the symptoms.

Muhammad Ali, one of the world’s greatest boxers and most recognizable sports figures, has died at the age of 74.

Ali’s health began to decline in recent years, and he died on June 3rd, 2016 in Scottsdale, Arizona. His death was met with sadness and shock by people all over the world. Ali will be remembered not only as one of the greatest athletes of all time but also as a man who used his platform to make a difference in the world.

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• Sports Stars
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Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.

Awards & achievements.

• Won Kentucky Golden Gloves titles six times in between 1955-60
• Became Olympics light heavyweight champion in 1960
• Twice won the Amateur Athletic Union Championships in 1959 and 1960
• Three times Ring Heavyweight Champion : 1964, 1974, and 1978
• Three times Lineal heavyweight champion : 1964, 1974 and 1978
• Two times  WBC Heavyweight champion :   1964 and 1974
• Martin Luther King Memorial Award in 1970
• Three times WBA heavyweight champion : 1964, 1974 and 1978
• Three times NABF Heavyweight champion :   1970, 1971 and 1973
• Three times " BWAA Fighter of the Year "  in 1965, 1974 and 1975
• Selected as the " Sportsman of the Year " by famous American magazine ‘ Sports Illustrated ’ in 1974
• Named as the " Athlete of the Year"  in 1974 by Associated Press and  also selected as " International Press Athlete of the Year "
• Honoured as BBC " Sports Personality of the Century " in 1999
• Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001
• Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005
• Received  Double Helix Medal in 2006

I hated every minute of training, but I said, Don't quit, suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.

These words are quoted by the man whose name has become a synonym of the boxing arena- " Muhammad Ali" . The most significant boxer who remained above board for his virtues and beliefs and even justified his words, he never gave up, neither on-ring nor off-ring. Ali bagged 56 professional wins in his career by his unique techniques. Indeed, his positive attitude made him an iconic personality with strong religious persuasion and self-belief to triumph every field of life.

Muhammad Ali was born on 17th January 1942 , formerly known as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. He got the name from his father Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr . who was a billboards painter whereas his mother was a domestic helper. In his youth, he experienced racial segregation which influenced his unimpeachable mind. The idea of Boxing struck to his mind while he was trailing a thief one night and got hindered by a police officer who told him to learn boxing first and hence the journey started.

Ali made his boxing debut as an amateur against a local wrestler in 1954 after that he recorded 100 amateur wins, including a gold medal in 1960   Summer Olympics , and two national Golden Gloves titles (1959 and 1960 respectively). Post that, he debuted dominantly as a professional boxer and bagged WBA , WBC  and Lineal Heavyweight titles which were preceded by Sonny Liston , one of the most prominent wrestlers of that era. Meanwhile, he also stated an example of resistance to white domination during the 1960’s Civil rights Movements .

Ali converted his name from Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. to Muhammad Ali after transforming his religion to Islam . His eye-catching performance made him much-publicized as one of the leading Lineal heavyweight boxers of the 20th century and the only boxer to be named as " The Ring magazine Fighter of the Year"  for six times. The most recognized sports magazine of America " Sports Illustrated"  ranked him as the " Greatest Athlete of 20th century ". He reigned in the boxing arena for several years by defeating numerous skilled boxers. 

Ali never failed to try new things throughout his life. Besides being one of the greatest boxers of the 20th century, he was also a musician who had recorded two Spoken Words (wordplay art) albums and a song " Rhythm and Blues"  for which he was twice nominated for the Grammy Awards . He wrote two autobiographies which convey images of his On-ring and Off-ring experiences. Ali took retirement from boxing in 1981 after which he gave immense devotion to religious and charitable work. In 1984 , he had a face-off with Parkinson's syndrome with which he fought with fortitude but lost his vim. Although Ali is not with us but his firm beliefs, fearless attitude and never giving predilection to win makes him alive in our heart, which always encourages us to move forward and follow our dreams, no matter how hard may be the path of glory.

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• Art History
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Muhammad Ali

Known as the world’s most famous boxing hero, Muhammad Ali is a retired American boxer. Ali brought unprecedented speed and grace to the sport and set a bar which was not very easy to achieve. His fighting style inspired many to follow his way. He made legendary sporting accomplishments throughout his entire career. He announced his retirement on June 27, 1979.

Birth and Early Years

Muhammad Ali was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. He was named after his father, Cassius Marcellus Clay, but Ali later changed his name after joining the Nation of Islam. In 1975, he converted to Sunni Islam. Ali has been married four times, and he has seven daughters and two sons.

Early Boxing Career

Ali was introduced to boxing at the age of twelve. He started boxing in junior high school where he learned skills from a policeman at a local gym. Before turning professional, Ali had won several amateur medals and achieved an outstanding record of 100 wins to five losses.

Major Accomplishments

During his early years, Muhammad Ali won several titles, including six Kentucky Golden Gloves awards, two national Golden Gloves titles, and the Amateur Athletic Union National Titles. In 1960, he won the Light-heavyweight gold medal in the Summer Olympics that were held in Rome.

By the latter half of 1963, Ali had become one of the top contenders for the world heavyweight championship title, which was held by Sonny Liston at that time. Liston had an intimidating personality and was known as the “Big Bear.”

Ali vs. Liston

The fight was arranged for February of 1964 in Miami. Liston was not only a dominating fighter, but he was also had criminal past. He had become world champion by knocking out Floyd Patterson in the second round while Ali’s previous two victories before the title challenge were hardly inspiring. This made Liston the favorite to retain the title and Ali was the underdog by odds of 7 to 1.

In the fourth round of the fight, Ali complained of blinding pain in his eye, which was caused by the ointment used by Liston’s trainer to treat his under-eye cut, which many believed was a deliberate ploy. However, Ali survived that handicap and recovered to come out on top strongly in the sixth round. In the seventh round, Liston did not answer the bell and Ali was declared the winner by TKO.

Ali fought Liston again in 1965 and defended the title. He also defended the title successfully against Floyd Patterson, Ernie Terrel, and Zora Folley.

Ali’s Exile and Comeback

Ali went into a four-year exile period when his boxing license was taken away and he was sentenced to five years in jail for dodging the draft. He was also stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. Despite this setback, Ali’s comeback after three and half years was a great hit. In October of 1970, he returned to the ring and defeated Jerry Quarry in the third round.

Rumble in the Jungle

This fight was an attempt by Muhammad Ali to win back his world heavyweight title. Millions of people sat in front of their televisions to watch the fight between Ali and George Foreman in 1974. The crowd was in favor of Foreman, who was seven years younger than Ali.

But Ali fought brilliantly by using his “rope-a-dope” tactic in which he takes punches from his opponent in an effort to wear him out. Ali defeated Foreman and regained his undisputed title.

In 1978, Ali lost his title to Leon Spinks, a boxer who is 12 years younger than him. However, he managed to win it back the same year. In 1981, he lost the final fight of his career to World Boxing Council champion Larry Holmes.

Later Years

Muhammad Ali has devoted his life to helping promote world peace, civil rights, cross-cultural understanding and humanitarian and basic human values. He supports several foundations and charities. Despite being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1984, Muhammad Ali still continues to work. Ali is an inspiration to several black Americans and others. Currently, he is living in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his fourth wife, Lonnie.

In 1996, Ali lit the Olympic torch at the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Ali was also presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a U.S. civilian can receive.

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In Just 8 Words, Muhammad Ali Delivered a Master Class in Leadership

Many consider Ali the greatest boxer in history. He may have also been the sport's greatest philosopher.

Chances are, if you're like me, you didn't know that heavyweight boxing champ Muhammad Ali also dipped his toe into the world of professional wrestling from time to time during his illustrious career. Well, it's true.

More specifically, in 1976, the Greatest fought in the "War of the Worlds" exhibition match against Antonio Inoki, a Japanese pro wrestler (Ali's leg almost had to be amputated due to an infection and blood clots he suffered during the match), and in 1985, he served as a guest referee for a WrestleMania I match between Hulk Hogan, Mr. T, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, and "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff.

By now, you're probably wondering why I'm bringing all this up.

Well, today the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) is inducting Muhammad Ali into its Hall of Fame Class of 2024. Ali will be inducted along with pro wrestlers Paul Heyman, Bull Nakano, and the U.S. Express tag team consisting of Mike Rotunda and Barry Windham.

All this got me thinking about Muhammad Ali's many wise words during the course of his illustrious career and beyond. They have long been an inspiration to anyone who struggled with getting through all sorts of challenges to accomplish great things, and they continue to inspire today.

As I looked over the Muhammad Ali quotes in an article I wrote a few years ago, this one in particular caught my eye:

"Don't count the days. Make the days count."

I think that too many leaders--entrepreneurs, company founders, managers, and executives--bide their time, waiting for opportunities to fall into their laps. They literally watch their calendars as the days pass, week by week, month by month, and year by year.

This is a mistake.

We only have 24 hours in each day, and 365 days in a year (excepting the occasional leap year). It's up to us to make them count--to get the most out of each and every one of them.

That might mean creating a vision for some future desired business outcome and putting it out to the universe--in an interview or article, a post on LinkedIn or social media, an all-hands meeting with employees, a meeting with investors, or so on.

Or it might mean doing volunteer work with a community-based organization that desperately needs your expertise and support.

Or it might simply mean unplugging from work for a while and spending some uninterrupted time with family and friends.

Whatever they mean to you, I suggest you heed Muhammad Ali's words. They can make a real and lasting difference to you as a leader--and as a human being.

This post originally appeared at inc.com .

Click here to subscribe to the Inc. newsletter: inc.com/newsletters "

Muhammad Ali: A sporting personality who changed the world

• Published 5 June 2016
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A look back at the life of boxing legend Muhammad Ali

To be sport's greatest must perversely be about more than sporting achievement. For running or jumping or kicking or fighting to matter to us, we have to be touched by the human soul behind the biomechanics.

No sportsman has touched more lives than Muhammad Ali. No sportsman has been celebrated so widely and deeply, and none will be mourned in quite the same way.

To talk of Ali as a champion heavyweight boxer is like saying the Beatles had a collective ear for melody. His skills in his chosen vocation were unmatched, but the effect they had on the world went far beyond those narrow proficiencies.

We often try to equate sport with more than just exceptional physical ability in one obtuse role. A man who can hit a small stationary ball more sweetly than any other is assumed to have similarly transcendent character. A woman who can run faster than any other born must live by a superior moral code.

Watch some of Ali's most famous interviews

Muhammad Ali - in his own words

Ali - an incredible life in pictures

Muhammad Ali - the ultimate fighter

The boxing legend posed with the Beatles during their maiden US tour

It is the sort of veneration that has as much to do with making us feel better about our sporting obsessions as it does with self-delusion. It helps us believe that what we are watching goes beyond bread and circuses, and is more than a mere distraction from the crueller realities elsewhere.

Ali was different. Confronted with moral challenges that would have defeated us as easily as the physical battles he fought, he proved himself superior to most of us in that sphere too.

He may have stumbled into his most famous stance; his famous comment on being drafted ("I ain't got no quarrel with them Vietcong") was such a throwaway line that reporter Bob Lipsyte of the New York Times, interviewing him outside his house, initially missed it.

Once convinced, he was unshakeable. All of us can argue for our principles. Some will march for them. Fewer are prepared to go to jail; fewer still give up all we have plus a golden promise yet to mature.

And it was never about veneration. We loved Ali because he did things we never could and shared our flaws too. Never an angel, always an inspiration; both real and unreal. He was a man with ample capacity for controversy.

"Put a hand on a Muslim sister, and you are to die," he once told an interviewer from Playboy. "A black man should be killed if he's messing with a white woman."

"And what if a Muslim woman wants to go out with non-Muslim blacks - or white men, for that matter?" asked the reporter. "Then she dies," said Ali. "Kill her, too."

He was a man who could cruelly taunt an outstanding comrade in Joe Frazier and draw accusations of hypocrisy for his relentless extra-marital adventures. He could be naïve and he could be foolish.

He was forgiven not because others shared all those militant views or chose to forget them, but because they were part of his growth as a man and a character.

We cannot understand what it is like to float and sting as he could in the ring, but we recognise in his life how our own personalities have been formed and developed, how young radicalism softens with age, how we have made our own mistakes and tried to make recompense.

Archive: Stars tributes to Ali at 70

Ali may have made his era, but the era also made him. His imperfections reflected the attitudes and beliefs he was surrounded by, even as his actions changed so many others.

He was forgiven too for another, simpler reason: the joy his public performances and personality would bring, not just to those who liked his sport but to those who had no previous care for it.

Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods have also converted the non-believers. Roger Federer made sport look like performance art, Sachin Tendulkar turned statistical accumulation into physical poetry.

But perhaps only Usain Bolt, of subsequent superstars, has got close to that same symbiosis with their audience: two smiling assassins of cynicism, making something which can be so serious seem so much fun, taking all of us along with them on the ride.

Neither were we alone. At the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year awards , external in 1999, when Ali polled more votes than all the other contenders put together to be crowned Personality of the Century, he transformed the greatest sportsmen and women of their generation from icons into an adoring audience.

All of them - world champions, Olympic gold medallists, multi-millionaires - wanted to touch his hand. Superstars become fan-boys and autograph hunters.

Ignore that infamous US Army IQ test which gave Ali a score of 78. He is loved because he understood how to connect with us all - whether you shook his hand or saw him dance in the ring before you, whether you watched old tapes years later or listened to the street poet stand-up quotes, whether you grew up in Louisville, Lagos or London.

Like the Beatles, his fellow cultural revolutionaries, he established the rules and then ripped them up; unlike the Beatles, he fell away and then came back stronger, as if they had split only to reform with something better than Revolver, as if they had been superseded by punk only to come back as the best live act in the world.

It is why parents have been tutoring their kids reverently on Ali for years, and why on Saturday morning it was so hard for so many to encapsulate how they felt about his death.

Muhammad Ali was awarded with the BBC Sports Personality of the Century

Trying to explain to my five-year-old son why his dad, granddad and his granny were all so quiet, how the death of a man they had never met thousands of miles away could affect them so much, the best I could come up with was that Muhammad Ali had made the world a better place.

When that phrase is usually employed it typically refers to the intimate circle around one individual. They made their world a better place.

Not so for Ali. And that is why the hours after his passing feel like both a lamentation and celebration. We want to hold his irresistible animation as close as we can, for there can never be another like him, not this time.

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How the world paid tribute to Muhammad Ali

• Published 4 June 2016

Boxing legend Muhammad Ali dies at 74

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How to get into boxing

• Published 11 June 2018

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