Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali was born on January 17 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky¹. He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay, the son of Odessa Clay and Cassius Clay Sr., at Louisville General Hospital in South Louisville; a brother, Rudy — later Rahaman Ali — was born two years afterwards, and the family soon moved into the Parkland neighborhood². Britannica records him as an American professional boxer and social activist¹. He died on June 3 2016 in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the age of 74².

On October 11 1954 the red Schwinn bicycle of the twelve-year-old Clay was stolen outside the annual Louisville Home Show². Reporting the theft to a nearby policeman, Joe Martin, the boy declared what he would do to the culprit; Martin, who trained young boxers, told him he should learn how to fight first². Britannica dates the start of his boxing education to the age of twelve, under Martin’s tutelage¹. AP records that he weighed only 89 pounds at the time and that he had vowed to punish the person who took the bicycle³.

His amateur career took shape in the national tournaments: the Golden Gloves championship in 1959, repeated in 1960 and joined by the AAU title and the Olympic light-heavyweight crown⁴. The Library of Congress, which documents his first newspaper coverage at seventeen, remembers him as a boxer, activist and poet from Louisville⁵. He was raised Baptist by his mother, in a household where his father was a Methodist, and it was not until 1959, in Chicago for the Golden Gloves tournament, that he first met a representative of the Nation of Islam⁶. That encounter began a connection that would define his public life within a few years⁶.

The light-heavyweight boxing tournament at the Rome Games ran from August 26 to September 5 1960 at the Palazzo dello Sport — a single-elimination event of nineteen boxers from nineteen countries⁷. Clay opened against Yvon Becaus, and the bout ended in a technical knockout for him; unanimous decisions over Gennady Shatkov and Tony Madigan took him to the final against Zbigniew Pietrzykowski⁷. Told by his seconds that he needed a knockout to win, he took over the last round against the Pole; Pietrzykowski stayed upright, but the judges gave Clay another unanimous decision and with it the gold medal⁷.

According to his first trainer, Joe Martin, he was afraid to fly to Rome and said he would not go unless he could travel by boat⁸. The story goes that he bought an army surplus parachute and wore it for the entire flight to the Games⁸. He had gone to Rome three months out of high school and came back with the light-heavyweight gold, having beaten Pietrzykowski of Poland in the final².

Clay turned professional just weeks after the Games and fought his first professional fight on October 29 1960 against Tunney Hunsaker, a police officer from Fayetteville, West Virginia⁹. The proceeds went to Kosair Children’s Hospital in Louisville⁹. He had signed with the Louisville Sponsoring Group, a syndicate of eleven wealthy white men, and in the early professional bouts he drew attention at least as much for charm and personality as for ring skill¹. He raised interest in his fights by reciting childlike poetry and coining self-descriptive phrases for himself¹.

On February 25 1964 at Miami Beach, Clay faced the champion Sonny Liston as a 7-1 underdog, with 43 of 46 writers predicting a Liston victory¹⁰. Liston did not come out for the seventh round, the failure afterwards attributed to a shoulder injury¹⁰. The Ali Center’s record enters the ending as a technical knockout in six rounds; the two accounts describe the same event, the champion’s abandonment of the fight before the seventh⁹. The result counts among the most stunning upsets in the history of sport, and Clay was the new heavyweight champion of the world¹.

At the weigh-in a commission doctor reported the challenger scared to death and emotionally unstable — a scene ESPN records as a piece of theatre, part of a plan to make Liston think he faced a madman¹¹. The morning after the fight he told reporters that he did not have to be what they wanted him to be, and that he was free to be who he wanted³. His membership in the Nation of Islam became public in those same days, days after the title win¹. On March 6 1964 his spiritual mentor, Elijah Muhammad, gave him the name Muhammad Ali¹.

He had filed for conscientious objector status in Louisville on March 9 1966, and the claim was denied⁶. Late in 1966 he moved to Houston and filed again on the advice of his lawyer, and in March 1967 that second request was refused⁶. The law recognised only those opposed to war in any form, and he was not eligible for the exemption, because he acknowledged that he would be willing to take part in an Islamic holy war¹. The refusal of induction came at the end of a legal campaign that had already been lost twice⁶.

On April 28 1967, citing his religious beliefs, he refused induction into the United States Army at Houston, at the height of the war in Vietnam¹. When the officer called his name he would not step forward, and the warning he received was that he was committing a felony punishable by five years in prison and a fine of ten thousand dollars¹⁰. The Ali Center’s record counts two refusals to step forward, made as a minister in what the record calls the non-violent religion of Islam². He was stripped of his heavyweight title and his boxing licences the same day².

The blunt sentence about the Vietcong, spoken fourteen months earlier, had already made his case a public one¹. On May 6 1967 he joined Martin Luther King in Louisville at a rally for fair housing practices². In June, Jim Brown organised a summit of twelve leading Black athletes, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Russell, to discuss his position; most arrived intending to change his mind and left expressing support for him². On June 20 1967 he was convicted of draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison and a ten thousand dollar fine; his lawyers filed an appeal immediately and posted bail, and he avoided jail⁶.

He was stripped of the championship and precluded from fighting by every state athletic commission in the United States for three and a half years¹. He remained free on bail while the conviction went up on appeal, and through those years he was barred from the ring¹. He would not fight again until he was allowed back into boxing, and the return came in October 1970 in Atlanta¹².

The opponent at the comeback was Jerry Quarry, and the Atlanta crowd was a sell-out of more than five thousand people¹². He won by technical knockout in the third round¹². The event carried more than a sporting meaning: in the judgment of the activist Julian Bond, it established Atlanta as the political capital of Black America¹².

His next great opponent was Joe Frazier, who had become the heavyweight champion during his absence from the ring¹. Two undefeated heavyweights met at Madison Square Garden on March 8 1971 in a fight billed as the Fight of the Century; each was guaranteed a then-record 2.5 million dollars¹⁰. Frazier decked him with a sweeping left hook in the fifteenth round and won a unanimous decision, the first defeat of Ali’s career¹⁰.

The case was docketed as number 783 and reached the Supreme Court on certiorari from the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit; it was argued on April 19 1971¹³. The hearing officer, Judge Lawrence Grauman, found the registrant sincere in his objection on religious grounds and recommended that the conscientious objector claim be sustained¹³. The Department of Justice overruled its own hearing officer and advised the Appeal Board that the claim should be denied, and the Board denied it without stating reasons¹³. By the time the case was argued, the Government no longer questioned the sincerity of the petitioner’s beliefs¹³.

He had said, when told of the decision, that he had done his celebrating already and had prayed to Allah³. His passport was returned and he was officially a free man². In January 1972 he made his first pilgrimage to Mecca². The fighting career continued in parallel with the legal one: Ken Norton broke his jaw in March 1973 and handed him the second loss of his career⁹.

The professional record closed at 56 wins, 5 losses and 37 knockouts¹. Britannica credits nineteen successful defences of the heavyweight championship and places him first among fighters to win that title on three separate occasions¹. The rows above keep the dates and the outcomes as the Ali Center’s boxing timeline records them⁹.

The Rumble in the Jungle was fought in the pre-dawn hours of October 30 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaire, and Ali entered the ring a 7-1 underdog against George Foreman¹⁰. The strategy that won it became known as the rope-a-dope: he leaned back against the ropes and covered up while the champion threw everything he had¹⁰. By the eighth round the previously unbeaten Foreman was exhausted, and Ali knocked him out, becoming the second heavyweight after Floyd Patterson to regain the championship¹⁰. He had predicted the shock in advance, telling the world to wait and see what happened when he took on Foreman after the resignation of a president³.

The fight drew 60,000 spectators in Kinshasa³. The victory made him champion for the second time¹. The decade had reversed the picture: an athlete denounced as anti-America in 1967 was by 1974 being invited to the White House¹⁰.

On December 10 1974 he made his first visit to the White House, where President Gerald Ford received him². Ford later said that he had wanted to meet him not only out of interest in sports but as part of an effort to heal the wounds of racial division, Vietnam and Watergate². It began a long list: he would meet seven presidents over the course of his lifetime².

The third Ali-Frazier fight took place on October 1 1975 outside Manila, and it is regarded by many as the greatest prizefight of all time¹. Ali was declared the victor when Frazier’s corner halted the bout after fourteen brutal rounds¹. It stands among the epic struggles between the two men, often considered the greatest heavyweight bout ever fought⁴. Ali said afterwards that it was like death, the closest thing to dying he had known; the words of both men are in the quotation bank below¹¹.

In February 1978, in Las Vegas, the title passed to Leon Spinks, who took it by split decision over fifteen rounds in only his eighth professional bout⁹. On September 15 1978, before some 70,000 people at the Superdome in New Orleans, he won it back with a unanimous decision³. It was the third time he had won the world heavyweight championship, a first in the history of boxing³. He announced his retirement the following year³.

He returned on October 2 1980 against Larry Holmes at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, taking thyroid medication to lose weight, and the trainer Angelo Dundee ended the fight before the eleventh round⁹. The last fight came on December 11 1981 against Trevor Berbick in Nassau — the sixty-first and final bout of his career; he began it trying to look like his former self, but by the sixth round he was tiring⁹. After Berbick was declared the winner, he retired officially⁹.

From the childlike poetry of the early professional bouts to the reflections of the last years, this is his voice as the sources record it¹.

In September 1984, after his health had deteriorated since retirement, he checked himself into Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease — a brain disorder marked by trembling, stiffness, difficulty with walking, and problems of balance and coordination². The condition stayed with him for more than three decades, and during the final illness Reuters noted that he had kept a low profile in recent years¹⁴. He once calculated that he had taken 29,000 punches to the head and made 57 million dollars in his professional career³.

On July 19 1996 he lit the Olympic cauldron at the Atlanta Games, a moment the Ali Center records as captivating 3.5 billion viewers worldwide². He had waited out of sight until the swimmer Janet Evans carried the flame to the top of the stairs, then stepped out of the shadows to light his torch while the crowd took up his name⁸. On August 4 1996, at halftime of the men’s basketball final, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, gave him a replacement gold medal for the one he had won in 1960⁸.

Stories had grown around the first medal: he told at least once of throwing it from the Jefferson County Bridge in Louisville after being refused service at a restaurant⁸. AP reports that the story may be apocryphal and that he later told friends he had simply misplaced the medal³. In November 1990, despite warnings, he travelled to Baghdad, met Saddam Hussein for nearly an hour, and secured the release of fifteen United States hostages taken during the invasion of Kuwait².

In January 1981 he had talked a distressed man down from a ninth-floor window in Los Angeles, telling him that he was a brother and that he loved him². In 1984 he carried the Olympic flame through the streets of Louisville in the torch relay for the Los Angeles Games⁸. In 2005 Lonnie and Muhammad Ali founded the Muhammad Ali Center in their hometown of Louisville as a place of inspiration and reflection¹⁵. He died late in the evening of June 3 2016 in Scottsdale, Arizona, of respiratory complications; he was 74². Louisville became the centre of a public memorial for seven days, and hundreds of thousands came to mourn².

The record is not seamless; on five points the sources disagree among themselves, and this entry keeps their versions side by side¹.