Muhammad Ali

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Muhammad Ali walked into the ring on the 25th of February 1964, a 22-year-old from Louisville, Kentucky, facing Sonny Liston, the menacing heavyweight champion with a criminal past and ties to organized crime. The odds were 8:1 against Ali, then still fighting under his birth name Cassius Clay. By the end of that night, he had knocked out the world, and he did it in a way nobody expected.

  What made Ali something larger than a boxer was never just the punching. He wrote poetry. He predicted the round of each knockout. He refused military service during a war and watched his titles get stripped away as punishment. He came back, lost, came back again, and eventually became the first man to win the heavyweight championship three times. He stood at the center of some of the most turbulent years in American history and made himself impossible to ignore.

  This is the story of how a child from a segregated city in Kentucky, who was first steered toward boxing when his bicycle was stolen, became one of the most recognized people on earth.

• 2. Louisville Beginnings

  ›

  Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born on the 17th of January 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Odessa Grady Clay and Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr. His father painted signs and billboards. His mother worked as a domestic helper. The name Cassius Marcellus Clay was handed down from a 19th-century Republican politician and abolitionist, and DNA testing performed in 2018 would later show that the family was descended from a former slave named Archer Alexander, who had served as the model for the Emancipation Memorial.

  Clay grew up under racial segregation, and its weight touched him early. His mother recalled being with him when he was refused a drink of water at a store because of his race, and she said it really affected him. The 1955 murder of Emmett Till struck him so hard that he vandalized a local rail yard to release the rage. He later told his daughter Hana that nothing would ever shake him up more than that story.

  He attended Central High School in Louisville and struggled there because he was dyslexic, which made reading and writing difficult. It was at age 12 that his path changed. A police officer and boxing coach named Joe E. Martin encountered him fuming in the street because someone had stolen his bicycle. The boy announced he was going to whup the thief. Martin told him he had better learn to fight first.

  Clay's amateur record reached 100 wins against 8 losses. He won six Kentucky Golden Gloves titles, two national Golden Gloves titles, and two Amateur Athletic Union national titles. At 18, at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, he won the gold medal in the light heavyweight division.

• 3. The Mouth That Moved Mountains

  ›

  Clay made his professional debut on the 29th of October 1960, winning a six-round decision over Tunney Hunsaker. By the end of 1963, he had built a record of 19 wins and no losses, with 15 of those wins by knockout. He defeated a long list of fighters, and through every one of those fights he talked.

  He called Doug Jones "an ugly little man" and Henry Cooper a "bum". He told the press that Madison Square Garden was "too small for me". He predicted the round in which he would finish opponents, and when those predictions came true they seemed less like luck and more like theatre. The fight with Jones on the 13th of March 1963 at Madison Square Garden was his toughest of that stretch. Jones staggered Clay in the first round, and although Clay won by unanimous decision, the crowd threw debris into the ring in protest. That very fight was later named Fight of the Year by The Ring magazine.

  Clay traced his bragging style to an unlikely source: professional wrestler Gorgeous George Wagner. In a 1969 interview, Clay said he met George in Las Vegas in 1961, and George told him that talking a big game would fill arenas with fans who either wanted to see him win or wanted to see him lose. Clay took the lesson to heart.

  He hired trainer Angelo Dundee in 1960 to replace Archie Moore, with whom Clay had parted after refusing to do chores like washing dishes. Dundee and Clay had first met in February 1957 during Clay's amateur career. Clay also approached his longtime idol Sugar Ray Robinson about becoming his manager, and Robinson turned him down.

• 4. Name, Faith, and Nation

  ›

  Ali said he first heard of the Nation of Islam while competing in the Golden Gloves tournament in Chicago in 1959. By 1962, he had met Malcolm X, who became his spiritual and political mentor. Nation of Islam members, including Malcolm X, were visible in his entourage during the build-up to the first Liston fight, and a story in a Miami newspaper disclosing his involvement nearly got the bout canceled.

  Shortly after winning the heavyweight title in 1964, Ali renounced the name Cassius Clay, calling it a slave name and a white man's name. He added that he had not chosen it and did not want it. On the 6th of March 1964, Elijah Muhammad gave a radio address announcing the new name: Muhammad, meaning one who is worthy of praise, and Ali, meaning most high. Ali moved to the south side of Chicago and lived near the Nation of Islam's Mosque Maryam for roughly 12 years. At the time, only a handful of journalists, most notably Howard Cosell, accepted the new name.

  His friendship with Malcolm X ended painfully. Malcolm split from the Nation of Islam just weeks after Ali joined, and Ali stayed. He later said that turning his back on Malcolm was one of the mistakes he regretted most in his life.

  His conversion to Sunni Islam came in the mid-1970s, after the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975. In a 2004 autobiography, Ali credited Warith Deen Muhammad with persuading the Nation's followers to adopt Sunni Islam. Ali had made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in 1972, an experience he said gave him a different outlook and greater spiritual awareness, much as it had for Malcolm X. He went again in 1988. He also developed an interest in Sufism, which he traced in his 2003 autobiography to the writings of Inayat Khan.

• 5. The Draft and Its Price

  ›

  On the 28th of April 1967, Ali appeared in Houston for his scheduled induction into the U.S. Armed Forces. When his name was called, he refused to step forward. He refused three times. An officer warned him he was committing a felony punishable by five years in prison and a fine of $10,000. Ali did not move.

  His reason was plain. He had stated: "War is against the teachings of the Qur'an." He asked why he should go ten thousand miles from home to drop bombs on people in Vietnam while African Americans in Louisville were treated like dogs and denied basic human rights. He added that no Viet Cong had ever called him a name used to degrade Black Americans, though that second part of the quote was later described as probably apocryphal.

  That same day, the New York State Athletic Commission suspended his boxing license and the World Boxing Association stripped him of his title. His passport was taken. He was convicted on the 20th of June 1967, after the jury deliberated for only 21 minutes. He was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $10,000. He paid a bond and remained free while appealing.

  Initially, he became arguably the most hated man in the country and received many death threats. Sports journalist Jerry Izenberg wrote that bomb threats emptied his office and his car windshield was smashed with a sledgehammer after he defended Ali's decision. But as the war grew unpopular, the portrait shifted. Ali began speaking at colleges and universities across the country, a circuit that was rare if not unprecedented for a prizefighter. At Howard University, he gave his speech titled Black Is Best to an audience of 4,000 students.

  On the 28th of June 1971, the Supreme Court overturned Ali's conviction by an 8-0 unanimous vote in Clay v. United States. Justice Thurgood Marshall recused himself because he had been the U.S. Solicitor General at the time of the conviction. The court did not address the merits of Ali's claims directly. It held that the appeal board had given no reason for denying his conscientious objector status, making it impossible to determine which legal test it had applied, and therefore the conviction had to be reversed.

  Al Sharpton later observed that for the heavyweight champion of the world to put money and endorsements on the line for a cause gave legitimacy to the movement that nothing else could have done. Civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy honored Ali with the annual Martin Luther King Award in 1970, calling him "a living example of soul power, the March on Washington in two fists."

• 6. The Great Fights

  ›

  The Fight of the Century, held on the 8th of March 1971 at Madison Square Garden, matched two undefeated fighters who each had a legitimate claim to the heavyweight title. Veteran boxing writer John Condon called it the greatest event he had ever worked on in his life. The bout was broadcast to 36 countries and promoters granted 760 press passes.

  Frazier knocked Ali down in the final round with a left hook that referee Arthur Mercante Sr. described as as hard as a man can be hit. Ali was back on his feet in three seconds but lost by unanimous decision. It was his first professional defeat. That night also marked the first appearance of what would later be called the rope-a-dope strategy, as Ali leaned against the ropes and absorbed punishment, trying to tire Frazier.

  On the 30th of October 1974, in Kinshasa, Zaire, Ali faced George Foreman in the bout nicknamed the Rumble in the Jungle. Foreman had destroyed Joe Frazier and Ken Norton, who had each given Ali serious trouble. Ali was 32 years old and came in as a 4-1 underdog against the previously unbeaten Foreman. Before the fight, Ali told David Frost that if people thought the world was surprised when Nixon resigned, they should wait until he whipped Foreman. The crowds in Zaire chanted "Ali, bomaye", meaning Ali, kill him, wherever he went.

  In the eighth round, Ali dropped an exhausted Foreman with a combination at center ring. Foreman could not make the count. Foreman later recalled hitting Ali hard to the jaw in about the seventh round and hearing Ali whisper in his ear: "That all you got, George?" The fight was watched by a record estimated television audience of 1 billion viewers worldwide, making it the most-watched live television broadcast up to that time.

  The third Frazier fight, known as the Thrilla in Manila, was held on the 1st of October 1975 in temperatures approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The bout lasted into the 14th round, when Frazier's trainer Eddie Futch refused to allow Frazier to answer the bell for the 15th, despite Frazier's protests. Frazier's eyes were both swollen shut. Ali, slumped on his stool in his corner, said afterwards that the fight was the closest thing to dying that he knew.

• 7. Decline and Legacy

  ›

  Ali's last years in the ring carried warning signs he and those around him often chose not to see. After his narrow win over Earnie Shavers in September 1977, his longtime doctor Ferdie Pacheco quit because Ali refused to act on medical reports showing that his kidneys were deteriorating. Pacheco wrote to Ali's trainer, Ali's wife, and Ali himself; he received no response.

  In February 1978, Ali faced Leon Spinks, who had only seven professional bouts to his credit. Ali prepared poorly and lost the title by split decision. He regained it in a rematch in September at the Superdome in New Orleans, where 70,000 people paid a total of $6 million in admission, the largest live gate in boxing history at that time. Ali won by unanimous decision, becoming the first heavyweight champion to win the belt three times.

  His final significant fight, on the 2nd of October 1980 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas against Larry Holmes, was the only time Ali ever lost by stoppage. Holmes dominated. After the tenth round, trainer Angelo Dundee stepped into the ring and instructed the referee to halt the fight. Actor Sylvester Stallone, who was ringside, compared watching it to witnessing an autopsy on a man still alive. Ali fought one final time on the 11th of December 1981 in Nassau, Bahamas, losing a ten-round decision to Trevor Berbick.

  In 1984, Ali made public his diagnosis of Parkinson's syndrome. He disputed that boxing had caused it, and so did his specialist physicians, though many reports attributed it to the blows he had absorbed. He carried the Olympic torch at the 1996 Atlanta Games, lighting it to open the Games at the Georgia Dome, the same venue where he had received a replacement for the gold medal he had lost years earlier. He died on the 3rd of June 2016. His fourth wife, Yolanda, who had first met him when she was six years old in Louisville in 1963, had been his primary caregiver since 1982 and remained with him until the end.