Muhammad Ali

Their life

Born Cassius Clay in Louisville, he took up boxing at twelve after his bicycle was stolen and he told a policeman he wanted to whip whoever took it. He won Olympic gold in 1960, took the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston in 1964, joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name, and in 1967 refused induction into the US Army on religious grounds — losing his title, his licence and three and a half years of his prime before the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in his favour. He came back to win the title twice more, at Kinshasa against Foreman and in Manila against Frazier. He also said cruel things about Frazier that he later regretted publicly, and he fought years past the point his body could take it, developing Parkinson's syndrome in his forties.

Known for

• Beating Sonny Liston in 1964
• Refusing Vietnam War induction
• Rumble in the Jungle
• Thrilla in Manila
• Three-time heavyweight champion
• Float like a butterfly poetry

The road they walked

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. He was named for his father, a sign and billboard painter, who was named for a white Kentucky abolitionist. His mother, Odessa, kept the household together. Louisville was a segregated Southern city, and the boy who grew up there learned early what the color line allowed and what it did not. The policeman he threatened over the stolen bicycle, Joe Martin, also ran a boxing gym, and Clay began training there. He was quick and tireless, and he already knew how to draw a crowd. In 1960 he won the Olympic light heavyweight gold medal in Rome, and he turned professional with a group of Louisville businessmen behind him and Angelo Dundee in his corner.

On February 25, 1964, in Miami Beach, the loud young challenger beat the fearsome champion Sonny Liston, who did not come out for the seventh round. Within days Clay announced that he belonged to the Nation of Islam, and soon he took the name Muhammad Ali. Many sportswriters and much of the public refused to use it. He fought on, defending the title repeatedly. Then, on April 28, 1967, he declined induction into the US Army in Houston. He was convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five years (he stayed free on appeal), stripped of his title, and barred from boxing in most of the country. He spent the next three and a half years in exile from the ring, speaking on college campuses while the Vietnam War turned public opinion toward him. In June 1971 the Supreme Court overturned his conviction unanimously.

He returned in 1970 and lost to Joe Frazier in March 1971 in the first of their three fights. In 1974 he beat George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire, using what he called rope-a-dope, and took back the heavyweight title. His 1975 fight with Frazier in Manila was one of the most punishing in the sport's history. He lost the title to Leon Spinks in 1978 and won it back months later, becoming the first man to win the heavyweight championship three times. He kept fighting until 1981 and finished with a record of 56 wins and 5 losses. By then the damage was visible, and in 1984 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome. In his later decades he turned to charity and diplomacy, and the world that once vilified him came to treat him as a beloved figure.

How their story ended

Muhammad Ali died on June 3, 2016, at a hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona, at age 74, after being admitted with respiratory trouble. His family said the cause was septic shock from unspecified natural causes. He had lived for more than thirty years with Parkinson's syndrome, which had left his speech faint and his hands trembling, though he kept making public appearances for as long as he could, including lighting the Olympic flame in Atlanta in 1996. His funeral in Louisville on June 10 was an interfaith service that he had helped plan in advance, and thousands lined the streets as the procession passed through his hometown.

In their words

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