He was fast of fist and foot \u2014 lip, too \u2014 a heavyweight champion who promised to shock the world and did. He floated. He stung. Mostly he thrilled, even after the punches had taken their toll and his voice barely rose above a whisper.<\/p>\n
He was The Greatest.<\/p>\n
Muhammad Ali died Friday at age 74, according to a statement from the family. He was hospitalized in the Phoenix area with respiratory problems earlier this week, and his children had flown in from around the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sad day for life, man. I loved Muhammad Ali, he was my friend. Ali will never die,\u201d Don King, who promoted some of Ali\u2019s biggest fights, told The Associated Press early Saturday. \u201cLike Martin Luther King his spirit will live on, he stood for the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
A funeral will be held in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. The city held a memorial service Saturday.<\/p>\n
One of Ali\u2019s daughters described her father\u2019s last moments in an Instagram post, saying his heart wouldn\u2019t stop beating for 30 minutes after all of his other organs failed. Hana Ali said the family was surrounding her father, hugging and kissing him, holding his hands and chanting an Islamic prayer, while his heart kept beating as his other organs gave out. \u201cNo one had even seen anything like it. A true testament to the strength of his Spirit and Will!\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
With a wit as sharp as the punches he used to \u201cwhup\u201d opponents, Ali dominated sports for two decades before time and Parkinson\u2019s disease, triggered by thousands of blows to the head, ravaged his magnificent body, muted his majestic voice and ended his storied career in 1981.<\/p>\n
He won and defended the heavyweight championship in epic fights in exotic locations, spoke loudly on behalf of blacks, and famously refused to be drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War because of his Muslim beliefs.<\/p>\n
Despite his debilitating illness, he traveled the world to rapturous receptions even after his once-bellowing voice was quieted and he was left to communicate with a wink or a weak smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was the greatest fighter of all time but his boxing career is secondary to his contribution to the world,\u201d promoter Bob Arum told the AP early Saturday. \u201cHe\u2019s the most transforming figure of my time certainly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Revered by millions worldwide and reviled by millions more, Ali cut quite a figure, 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds in his prime. \u201cFloat like a butterfly, sting like a bee,\u201d his cornermen exhorted, and he did just that in a way no heavyweight had ever fought before.<\/p>\n
He fought in three different decades, finished with a record of 56-5 with 37 knockouts \u2014 26 of those bouts promoted by Arum \u2014 and was the first man to win heavyweight titles three times.<\/p>\n
He whipped the fearsome Sonny Liston twice, toppled the mighty George Foreman with the rope-a-dope in Zaire, and nearly fought to the death with Joe Frazier in the Philippines. Through it all, he was trailed by a colorful entourage who merely added to his growing legend.<\/p>\n
\u201cRumble, young man, rumble,\u201d cornerman Bundini Brown would yell to him.<\/p>\n
And rumble Ali did. He fought anyone who meant anything and made millions of dollars with his lightning-quick jab. His fights were so memorable that they had names \u2014 \u201cRumble in the Jungle\u201d and \u201cThrilla in Manila.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it was as much his antics \u2014 and his mouth \u2014 outside the ring that transformed the man born Cassius Clay into a household name as Muhammad Ali.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am the greatest,\u201d Ali thundered again and again.<\/p>\n
Few would disagree.<\/p>\n
Ali spurned white America when he joined the Black Muslims and changed his name. He defied the draft at the height of the Vietnam war \u2014 \u201cI ain\u2019t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong\u201d \u2014 and lost 3 1\/2 years from the prime of his career. He entertained world leaders, once telling Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos: \u201cI saw your wife. You\u2019re not as dumb as you look.\u201d<\/p>\n
He later embarked on a second career as a missionary for Islam.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoxing was my field mission, the first part of my life,\u201d he said in 1990, adding with typical braggadocio, \u201cI will be the greatest evangelist ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ali couldn\u2019t fulfill that goal because Parkinson\u2019s robbed him of his speech. It took such a toll on his body that the sight of him in his later years \u2014 trembling, his face frozen, the man who invented the Ali Shuffle now barely able to walk \u2014 shocked and saddened those who remembered him in his prime.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople naturally are going to be sad to see the effects of his disease,\u201d Hana Ali said when he turned 65. \u201cBut if they could really see him in the calm of his everyday life, they would not be sorry for him. He\u2019s at complete peace, and he\u2019s here learning a greater lesson.\u201d<\/p>\n
The quiet of Ali\u2019s later life was in contrast to the roar of a career that had breathtaking highs along with terrible lows. He exploded on the public scene with a series of nationally televised fights that gave the public an exciting new champion, and he entertained millions as he sparred verbally with the likes of bombastic sportscaster Howard Cosell.<\/p>\n
Ali once calculated he had taken 29,000 punches to the head and made $57 million in his pro career, but the effect of the punches lingered long after most of the money was gone. That didn\u2019t stop him from traveling tirelessly to promote Islam, meet with world leaders and champion legislation dubbed the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act. While slowed in recent years, he still managed to make numerous appearances, including a trip to the 2012 London Olympics.<\/p>\n
Despised by some for his outspoken beliefs and refusal to serve in the U.S. Army in the 1960s, an aging Ali became a poignant figure whose mere presence at a sporting event would draw long standing ovations.<\/p>\n
With his hands trembling so uncontrollably that the world held its breath, he lit the Olympic torch for the 1996 Atlanta Games in a performance as riveting as some of his fights.<\/p>\n
A few years after that, he sat mute in a committee room in Washington, his mere presence enough to persuade lawmakers to pass the boxing reform bill that bore his name.<\/p>\n
Members of his inner circle weren\u2019t surprised. They had long known Ali as a humanitarian who once wouldn\u2019t think twice about getting in his car and driving hours to visit a terminally ill child. They saw him as a man who seemed to like everyone he met \u2014 even his archrival Frazier.<\/p>\n
\u201cI consider myself one of the luckiest guys in the world just to call him my friend,\u201d former business manager Gene Kilroy said. \u201cIf I was to die today and go to heaven it would be a step down. My heaven was being with Ali.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of his biggest opponents would later become a big fan, too. On the eve of the 35th anniversary of their \u201cRumble in the Jungle,\u201d Foreman paid tribute to the man who so famously stopped him in the eighth round of their 1974 heavyweight title fight, the first ever held in Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t call him the best boxer of all time, but he\u2019s the greatest human being I ever met,\u201d Foreman said. \u201cTo this day he\u2019s the most exciting person I ever met in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born Cassius Marcellus Clay on Jan. 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky, Ali began boxing at age 12 after his new bicycle was stolen and he vowed to policeman Joe Martin that he would \u201cwhup\u201d the person who took it.<\/p>\n
He was only 89 pounds at the time, but Martin began training him at his boxing gym, the beginning of a six-year amateur career that ended with the light heavyweight Olympic gold medal in 1960.<\/p>\n
Ali had already encountered racism. On boxing trips, he and his amateur teammates would have to stay in the car while Martin bought them hamburgers. When he returned to Louisville with his gold medal, the Chamber of Commerce presented him a citation but said it didn\u2019t have time to co-sponsor a dinner.<\/p>\n
In his autobiography, \u201cThe Greatest,\u201d Ali wrote that he tossed the medal into the Ohio River after a fight with a white motorcycle gang, which started when he and a friend were refused service at a Louisville restaurant.<\/p>\n
The story may be apocryphal, and Ali later told friends he simply misplaced the medal. Regardless, he had made his point.<\/p>\n
After he beat Liston to win the heavyweight title in 1964, Ali shocked the boxing world by announcing he was a member of the Black Muslims \u2014 the Nation of Islam \u2014 and was rejecting his \u201cslave name.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a Baptist youth he spent much of his time outside the ring reading the Bible. From now on, he would be known as Muhammad Ali and his book of choice would be the Quran.<\/p>\n
Ali\u2019s affiliation with the Nation of Islam outraged and disturbed many white Americans, but it was his refusal to be inducted into the Army that angered them most.<\/p>\n
That happened on April 28, 1967, a month after he knocked out Zora Folley in the seventh round at Madison Square Garden in New York for his eighth title defense.<\/p>\n
He was convicted of draft evasion, stripped of his title and banned from boxing.<\/p>\n
Ali appealed the conviction on grounds he was a Muslim minister. He married 17-year-old Belinda Boyd, the second of his four wives, a month after his conviction, and had four children with her. He had two more with his third wife, Veronica Porsche, and he and his fourth wife, Lonnie Williams, adopted a son.<\/p>\n
During his banishment, Ali spoke at colleges and briefly appeared in a Broadway musical called \u201cBig Time Buck White.\u201d Still facing a prison term, he was allowed to resume boxing three years later, and he came back to stop Jerry Quarry in three rounds on Oct. 26, 1970, in Atlanta despite efforts by Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox to block the bout.<\/p>\n
He was still facing a possible prison sentence when he fought Frazier for the first time on March 8, 1971, in what was labeled \u201cThe Fight of the Century.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few months later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction on an 8-0 vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve done my celebrating already,\u201d Ali said after being informed of the decision. \u201cI said a prayer to Allah.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many in boxing believe Ali was never the same fighter after his lengthy layoff, even though he won the heavyweight championship two more times and fought for another decade.<\/p>\n
Perhaps his most memorable fight was the \u201cRumble in the Jungle,\u201d when he upset a brooding Foreman to become heavyweight champion once again at age 32.<\/p>\n
Many worried that Ali could be seriously hurt by the powerful Foreman, who had knocked Frazier down six times in a second round TKO.<\/p>\n
But while his peak fighting days may have been over, he was still in fine form verbally. He promoted the fight relentlessly, as only he could.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned,\u201d he said. \u201cWait till I whup George Foreman\u2019s behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ali won over a country before he won the fight, mingling with people as he trained and displaying the kind of playful charm the rest of the world had already seen. On the plane into the former Congo he asked what the citizens of Zaire disliked most. He was told it was Belgians because they had once colonized the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeorge Foreman is a Belgian,\u201d Ali cried out to the huge crowd that greeted him at the airport. By the time the fight finally went off in the early morning hours of Oct. 30, 1974, Zaire was his.<\/p>\n
\u201cAli booma-ya (Ali kill him),\u201d many of the 60,000 fans screamed as the fight began in Kinshasa.<\/p>\n
Ali pulled out a huge upset to win the heavyweight title for a second time, allowing Foreman to punch himself out. He used what he would later call the \u201crope-a-dope\u201d strategy \u2014 something even trainer Angelo Dundee knew nothing about.<\/p>\n
Finally, he knocked out an exhausted Foreman in the eighth round, touching off wild celebrations among his African fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told you I was the greatest,\u201d Ali said.<\/p>\n
That might have been argued by followers of Joe Louis or Rocky Marciano or Sugar Ray Robinson, but there was no doubt that Ali was just what boxing needed in the early 1960s.<\/p>\n
He spouted poetry and brash predictions. After the sullen and frightening Liston, he was a fresh and entertaining face in a sport that struggled for respectability.<\/p>\n
At the weigh-in before his Feb. 25, 1964, fight with Liston, Ali carried on so much that some observers thought he was scared stiff and suggested the fight in Miami Beach be called off.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crowd did not dream when they lay down their money that they would see a total eclipse of the Sonny,\u201d Ali said.<\/p>\n
Ali went on to punch Liston\u2019s face lumpy and became champion for the first time when Liston quit on his stool after the sixth round.<\/p>\n
\u201cFloat like a butterfly, sting like a bee,\u201d became Ali\u2019s rallying cry.<\/p>\n
His talent for talking earned him the nickname \u201cThe Louisville Lip,\u201d but he had a new name of his own in mind: Muhammad Ali.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have to be what you want me to be,\u201d he told reporters the morning after beating Liston. \u201cI\u2019m free to be who I want.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frazier refused to call Ali by his new name, insisting he was still Cassius Clay. So did Ernie Terrell in their Feb. 6, 1967, fight, a mistake he would come to regret through 15 long rounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s my name?\u201d Ali demanded as he repeatedly punched Terrell in the face. \u201cWhat\u2019s my name?\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time Ali was able to return to the ring following his forced layoff, he was bigger than ever. Soon he was in the ring for his first of three epic fights against Frazier, with each fighter guaranteed $2.5 million.<\/p>\n
Before the fight, Ali called Frazier an \u201cUncle Tom\u201d and said he was \u201ctoo ugly to be the champ.\u201d His gamesmanship could have a cruel edge, especially when it was directed toward Frazier.<\/p>\n
In the first fight, though, Frazier had the upper hand. He relentlessly wore Ali down, flooring him with a crushing left hook in the 15th round and winning a decision.<\/p>\n
It was the first defeat for Ali, but the boxing world had not seen the last of him and Frazier in the ring. Ali won a second fight, and then came the \u201cThrilla in Manila\u201d on Oct. 1, 1975, in the Philippines, a brutal bout that Ali said afterward was \u201cthe closest thing to dying\u201d he had experienced.<\/p>\n
Ali won that third fight but took a terrific beating from the relentless Frazier before trainer Eddie Futch kept Frazier from answering the bell for the 15th round.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey told me Joe Frazier was through,\u201d Ali told Frazier at one point during the fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey lied,\u201d Frazier said, before hitting Ali with a left hook.<\/p>\n
The fight \u2014 which most in boxing agree was Ali\u2019s last great performance \u2014 was part of a 16-month period on the mid-1970s when Ali took his show on the road, fighting Foreman in Zaire, Frazier in the Philippines, Joe Bugner in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Jean Pierre Coopman in Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n
The world got a taste of Ali in splendid form with both his fists and his mouth.<\/p>\n
In Malaysia, a member of the commission in charge of the gloves the fighters would wear told Ali they would be held in a prison for safekeeping before the fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy gloves are going to jail,\u201d shouted a wide-eyed Ali. \u201cThey ain\u2019t done nothing \u2014 yet!\u201d<\/p>\n
Ali would go on to lose the title to Leon Spinks, then come back to win it a third time on Sept. 15, 1978, when he scored a decision over Spinks in a rematch before 70,000 people at the Superdome in New Orleans.<\/p>\n
Ali retired, only to come back and try to win the title for a fourth time against Larry Holmes on Oct. 2, 1980, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Ali grew a mustache, pronounced himself \u201cDark Gable\u201d and got down to a svelte 217 1\/2 pounds to beat Father Time. But Holmes, his former sparring partner, mercifully toyed with him until Dundee refused to let Ali answer the bell for the 11th round.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was like a little baby after the first round,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cI was throwing punches and missing just for the hell of it. I kept saying, \u2018Ali, why are you taking this?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018Shut up and fight, I\u2019m going to knock you out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
When the fight was over, Holmes and his wife went upstairs to pay their respects to Ali. In a darkened room, Holmes told Ali that he loved him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why did you whip my ass like that?\u201d Ali replied.<\/p>\n
A few years later, Ali said he would not have fought Holmes if he didn\u2019t think he could have won.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I had known Holmes was going to whip me and damage my brain, I would not have fought him,\u201d Ali said. \u201cBut losing to Holmes and being sick are not important in God\u2019s world.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was that world that Ali retreated to, fighting just once more, losing a 10-round decision to Trevor Berbick in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n
With his fourth wife, Lonnie, at his side, Ali traveled the world for Islam and other causes. In 1990, he went to Iraq on his own initiative to meet with Saddam Hussein and returned to the United States with 15 Americans who had been held hostage.<\/p>\n
One of the hostages recounted meeting Ali in Thomas Hauser\u2019s 1990 biography \u201cMuhammad Ali \u2014 His Life and Times.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always known that Muhammad Ali was a super sportsman; but during those hours that we were together, inside that enormous body I saw an angel,\u201d hostage Harry Brill-Edwards said.<\/p>\n
For his part, Ali didn\u2019t complain about the price he had paid in the ring.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I suffered physically was worth what I\u2019ve accomplished in life,\u201d he said in 1984. \u201cA man who is not courageous enough to take risks will never accomplish anything in life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He was fast of fist and foot \u2014 lip, too \u2014 a heavyweight champion who promised to shock the world and did. He floated. He stung. Mostly he thrilled, even after the punches had taken their toll and his voice barely rose above a whisper. He was The Greatest. Muhammad Ali died Friday at age […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":32267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-32266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32266"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=32266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}