Muhammad Ali, the venerated boxer -- the only three-time World Heavyweight Champion -- died Friday, June 3, after a multi-decade battle with Parkinson’s disease, according to family spokesperson Bob Gunnell. He was 74 years old.
"After a 32-year battle with Parkinson’s disease, Muhammad
Ali has passed away at the age of 74. The three-time World Heavyweight
Champion boxer died this evening,” according to family spokesperson Bob
Gunnell. "The Ali family would like to thank everyone for their
thoughts, prayers, and support and asks for privacy at this time."
"It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am," Ali once
famously said, adding on another occasion, "I am the greatest. I said
that even before I knew I was."
And he was.
His skill as a boxer may have led to his nickname as "The Greatest," and led Sports Illustrated to name him "Sportsman of the Century."
And his was a wide-ranging life, distinguished by his commanding
persona and embrace of controversy. Yes, he was a boxer, a sport he
turned to for a practical reason -- someone stole his bike when he was
12; he wanted revenge.
He was also an activist who opposed the Vietnam War, fought for
African-American civil rights and stood for racial justice. Ali was an
author, a singer, and even an actor who once starred in a Broadway
musical and had cameos on iconic 1970s TV shows, including Diffe'rent Strokes and The Sonny and Cher Show. He also had an eclectic set of friends, including Malcolm X and Elvis Presley.
Born Cassius Clay in 1942, he found early success on the Kentucky
amateur boxing circuit. After winning gold in the 1960 Olympics, he went
professional, and won every fight on his path to his first heavyweight
champion title.
Ali was known for his boxing talent, but captured America's attention
with his punishing (and often hilarious) wit -- what we'd call
trash-talk today -- which he used to fluster his opponents before ever
landing a punch
Prior to his first heavyweight title match with then-reigning champ
Sonny Liston (aka Big Bear), Ali said, "Liston even smells like a bear.
I'm gonna give him to the local zoo after I whup him." For good measure,
he made an unannounced visit to Liston's house, at three in the
morning, accompanied by press -- just to taunt him.
Ali won the fight -- and the title: World Heavyweight Champion.
Outside the ring, Ali doggedly pursued his political and spiritual
aims, even at the expense of his career. He joined the Nation of Islam
in 1964 just before his first Liston fight. Promoters demanded he
renounce the group, and he refused, at which point they threatened to
cancel the match. (It was then that Ali's friend and Nation of Islam
mentor, Malcolm X, arranged a compromise. The fight went on.)
Soon after winning the title, Ali changed his name. "Cassius Clay is a
slave name," he said. "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." Most journalists
ignored his request, echoing the injustice he confronted.
Ali put his convictions before his career again by refusing in 1967 to
be drafted into armed service -- a decision for which he was sentenced
to five years in prison. "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 in
Vietnam," he asked, "while so-called Negro people in Louisville are
treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?"
Though he never served time, and the Supreme Court overturned the
sentence four years later, his title was revoked, and his boxing license
was denied. It wasn't until 1970, as the nation soured on the Vietnam
War, that he competed again, ultimately regaining his title.
He boxed throughout the 1970s, winning some fights, losing others. Ali
was slowing down, and in retrospect, showing early signs of Parkinson's
disease. Mid-decade, after some tough matches, he made the first of
several retirements to focus, he said, on his faith, having converted to
Sunni Islam after a falling out with the Nation of Islam.
Still, he kept going back in the ring. His final boxing retirement came
in 1981 after losing several high-profile fights, including a
particularly violent defeat to Larry Holmes. Several years later, he
received a formal Parkinson's diagnosis.
Though he was slowed by his illness, he remained indefatigable. A
nation that once reviled him had come to revere him. Ronald Reagan
invited him to the White House. He lit the Olympic torch at the 1996
games in Atlanta, Georgia. During the first Gulf War, he met with Saddam
Hussein in an attempt to win the release of American hostages. And
though the National Security Agency had once marked him for
surveillance, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the
nation's highest civilian honor, by George W. Bush, in 2005.
A man of global stature, Muhammad Ali is an American icon, even in
death.
Like any one soul, Ali was fallible. But more than most, he fought and
persisted and did great things. For this he was loved, or as Ali liked
to put it, he was The Greatest.
"I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me," he said.
"It would be a better world."
According to Gunnell, Ali's funeral will take place in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
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