Muhammad Ali, the three-time heavyweight champion boxer whose
electrifying prowess in the ring and controversial outspokenness outside
of it made him one of the world’s most recognizable personalities of
the 20th Century, died after a battle with a respiratory illness. He was 74.
Ali, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s syndrome in 1984, died at a Phoenix hospital.
At the time fighting under his birth name, Cassius Clay
first gained worldwide notice at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, where
he won gold as a heavyweight. He more fully burst onto the public scene
in 1964, when as a 7-1 underdog he fought and defeated Sonny Liston for
the professional heavyweight championship. Loudly and frequently vowing
to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” Ali knocked out Liston
in seven rounds, becoming, at the time, the youngest champion in
history, at the age of 22.
It was before the Liston fight that Ali made his famous
“I Am the Greatest” speech, a phrase he repeated – and others chanted
along with him - countless times in the ensuing years, as he racked up
famous quotes, quips and occasional diatribes as easily as he did
knockouts. While boxing made him famous, it was that unparalleled
showmanship and activism outside the ring that cemented his status as
the most recognized person in the world.
After the Liston fight, Ali earned both the condemnation
and support of millions in the U.S. and around the world after publicly
announcing that he had joined the Nation of Islam. He would make more
and much bigger headlines later by making controversial statements about
race relations, openly celebrating his friendship with Malcolm X, and
staunchly refusing to be drafted for military duty in Vietnam.
In the ring, meanwhile, Ali stirred yet more controversy
just 15 months after the first Liston fight, when he won a rematch with a
first-round knockout punch so sudden and sharp that some believed
Liston had actually thrown the fight rather than stay in the ring with
the young champ. That produced one of the most iconic sports photos in
American history, which shows a glowering Ali waving a fist over the
laid-out Liston, screaming at him to get off the canvas.
The undefeated champ easily defeated a string of
opponents until he was stripped of the heavyweight crown in 1967, after
his continued refusal to be inducted into the military, and his
conviction as a draft evader. Saying at times that his enemy was more
“the white man” than the Communist forces in Vietnam, Ali made his
position clear with another of his innumerable one-liners: “Man, I ain’t
got no quarrel with them Vietcong,” adding that “no Vietnamese ever
called me n-----.”
His boxing license was eventually revoked in all 50
states, and he did not fight for more than three years before the U.S.
Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction in 1971. Ali would
regain the heavyweight title two more times, in 1974 and 1978, and
ultimately defended his title 19 times.
At 6-foot-3, around 215 pounds and with a 78-inch reach,
Ali early in his career paired an orthodox stance with, for a
heavyweight, a previously unmatched ability to dance around the ring,
eluding opponents’ swings and delivering devastating counterpunches. As
he lost a step later in his career, it was his willingness to absorb
constant hits while simultaneously wearing out his foe -- a strategy
that would become known as the rope-a-dope -- that allowed him to
maintain his standing as the sport’s best. When he retired in 1981 after
21 years as a professional, his lifetime record in 61 bouts stood at
56-5, with 37 wins by knockout.
Ali, somewhere between his prime and the aging fighter he
later became, returned to the ring in 1971 to fight also-unbeaten Joe
Frazier, who had captured the championship while Ali was in boxing
exile. The so-called “Fight of the Century” was billed by many as the
greatest sporting event in U.S. history, and drew a then-record domestic
and international closed circuit audience. Ali lost to Frazier in a
15-round decision, but returned to defeat Frazier in two more matches.
The Ali-Frazier rivalry is still the benchmark gold standard for many
sportswriters, who continue to invoke images of the intense relationship
between the two that fueled boxing for years.
After having his jaw broken and losing another fight in
1973, to ex-Marine Ken Norton, Ali began to plot his comeback. His
efforts came full circle in 1974 when he fought George Foreman in the
so-called “Rumble in the Jungle.”
Staged in Kinshasa, Zaire, the fight earned Ali a
then-unheard of $10 million as he knocked out Foreman in a stunning
upset, thus regaining the heavyweight crown. He successfully defended
his title the following year against Frazier in “The Thrilla in Manila,”
a fight widely regarded as one of the best heavyweight championship
matches in history. Ali briefly lost his title when he was defeated by
Leon Spinks in 1978, but regained it seven months later in a rematch,
making him the first three-time heavyweight champion.
By 1980, the 38-year-old Ali had retired but was lured
back by the possibility of capturing the boxing crown for an
unprecedented fourth time -- and the promise of an $8 million purse. The
match against Larry Holmes turned out to be a disaster that his trainer
Angelo Dundee stopped after the 10th round.
The descendant of a runaway Kentucky slave, Ali was born
Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. in Louisville, Kentucky on Jan. 17, 1942,
named for the 19th century abolitionist (and slave owner). He began
learning how to box at 12 when his bike was stolen. Seething over the
theft, one account of his story goes, Ali found Joe Martin, a police
officer, in a gym and promised to “whup” the culprit, to which Martin
told the 89-pound Ali, “you better learn to box first.”
By the time he reached the 1960 Olympics, Ali was already
a two-time Golden Gloves champion. And after turning pro following his
Olympics performance, he quickly ran up a 19-0 record before the famed
Liston showdown in February 1964.
As his boxing career flourished Ali, who was raised a
Baptist, looked for another spiritual outlet. The day after he beat
Liston for the first time, he announced that he was a member of the
Nation of Islam, and that his name was Cassius X -- the X reflecting the
unknown name taken from him by slave owners centuries before. Soon he
officially changed his name to Muhammad Ali.
After Ali first refused military service on religious
grounds, saying he was a preacher, he was convicted and sentenced to
five years in prison. He was free on appeal and made his money on
college speaking tours, and lost successive appeals and legal decisions
before the Supreme Court overturned his conviction.
As the effect of Parkinson’s began to take its toll on
Ali in the mid-1980s – a condition doctors believe was caused by the
thousands of blows to his head over the years – he remained a public and
newsworthy figure. In 1990, he met with President Saddam Hussein
following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait to successfully negotiate the
release of 14 U.S. hostages. Six years later, he lit the Olympic torch
at the 1996 games in Atlanta. He also helped found the Muhammad Ali
Parkinson Center at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix in
1997, which aims to aid those stricken with the disease.
In subsequent years, he remained a much-admired sports
icon. Sports Illustrated named him “Sportsman of the Century” in 1999,
and the BBC named him “Sports Personality of the Century” that same
year. In 2005, President George W. Bush awarded Ali the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor, and he was named a
flag bearer for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. He was the subject of
numerous books and a film documentary.
But no one could sum up Ali like the man himself. A
amateur poet who often regaled fans and sportswriters with his rhyming
pre-fight predictions, in which he often successfully called the round
in which the match would end, Ali once took credit for writing what he
insisted was the short poem ever written:
“Wheee. Me!”
Ali is survived by his wife, the former Lonnie Williams,
and nine children: Maryum, Rasheda, Jamillah, Hana, Laila, Khaliah,
Miya, Muhammad and Asaad. Ali was married four times: to Sonji Roi from
1964 to 1966; to Belinda Boyd from 1967 to 1977; and to Veronica Porsche
Ali from 1977 to 1986; and Williams, whom he married in 1986.
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