Muhammad Ali dead at 74

[Borgholio]

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/muha ... 74-n584776

Muhammad Ali, the silver-tongued boxer and civil rights champion who famously proclaimed himself "The Greatest" and then spent a lifetime living up to the billing, is dead.

Ali died Friday at a Phoenix-area hospital, where he had spent the past few days being treated for respiratory complications, a family spokesman confirmed to NBC News. He was 74.

"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," Bob Gunnell, a family spokesman, told NBC News.

Ali had suffered for three decades from Parkinson's Disease, a progressive neurological condition that slowly robbed him of both his legendary verbal grace and his physical dexterity. A funeral service is planned in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

Even as his health declined, Ali did not shy from politics or controversy, releasing a statement in December criticizing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States. "We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda," he said.

The remark bookended the life of a man who burst into the national consciousness in the early 1960s, when as a young heavyweight champion he converted to Islam and refused to serve in the Vietnam War, and became an emblem of strength, eloquence, conscience and courage. Ali was an anti-establishment showman who transcended borders and barriers, race and religion. His fights against other men became spectacles, but he embodied much greater battles.

Born Cassius Clay on Jan. 17, 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, to middle-class parents, Ali started boxing when he was 12, winning Golden Gloves titles before heading to the 1960 Olympics in Rome, where he won a gold medal as a light heavyweight.

He turned professional shortly afterward, supported at first by Louisville business owners who guaranteed him an unprecedented 50-50 split in earnings. His knack for talking up his own talents — often in verse — earned him the dismissive nickname "the Louisville Lip," but he backed up his talk with action, relocating to Miami to train with the legendary trainer Angelo Dundee and build a case for getting a shot at the heavyweight title.

As his profile rose, Ali acted out against American racism. After he was refused services at a soda fountain counter, he said, he threw his Olympic gold medal into a river.

Recoiling from the sport's tightly knit community of agents and promoters, Ali found guidance instead from the Nation of Islam, an American Muslim sect that advocated racial separation and rejected the pacifism of most civil rights activism. Inspired by Malcolm X, one of the group's leaders, he converted in 1963. But he kept his new faith a secret until the crown was safely in hand.

That came the following year, when heavyweight champion Sonny Liston agreed to fight Ali. The challenger geared up for the bout with a litany of insults and rhymes, including the line, "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." He beat the fearsome Liston in a sixth-round technical knockout before a stunned Miami Beach crowd. In the ring, Ali proclaimed, "I am the greatest! I am the greatest! I'm the king of the world."

The new champion soon renounced Cassius Clay as his "slave name" and said he would be known from then on as Muhammad Ali — bestowed by Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad. He was 22 years old.

The move split sports fans and the broader American public: an American sports champion rejecting his birth name and adopting one that sounded subversive.

Ali successfully defended his title six times, including a rematch with Liston. Then, in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Ali was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army.

He'd said previously that the war did not comport with his faith, and that he had "no quarrel" with America's enemy, the Vietcong. He refused to serve.

"My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, some poor, hungry people in the mud, for big powerful America, and shoot them for what?" Ali said in an interview. "They never called me nigger. They never lynched me. They didn't put no dogs on me."

His stand culminated with an April appearance at an Army recruiting station, where he refused to step forward when his name was called. The reaction was swift and harsh. He was stripped of his boxing title, convicted of draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison.

Released on appeal but unable to fight or leave the country, Ali turned to the lecture circuit, speaking on college campuses, where he engaged in heated debates, pointing out the hypocrisy of denying rights to blacks even as they were ordered to fight the country's battles abroad.

"My enemy is the white people, not Vietcongs or Chinese or Japanese," Ali told one white student who challenged his draft avoidance. "You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice. You my opposer when I want equality. You won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs and you want me to go somewhere and fight but you won't even stand up for me here at home."

Ali's fiery commentary was praised by antiwar activists and black nationalists and vilified by conservatives, including many other athletes and sportswriters.

His appeal took four years to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, which in June 1971 reversed the conviction in a unanimous decision that found the Department of Justice had improperly told the draft board that Ali's stance wasn't motivated by religious belief.

Toward the end of his legal saga, Georgia agreed to issue Ali a boxing license, which allowed him to fight Jerry Quarry, whom he beat. Six months later, at a sold-out Madison Square Garden, he lost to Joe Frazier in a 15-round duel touted as "the fight of the century." It was Ali's first defeat as a pro.

That fight began one of boxing's and sport's greatest rivalries. Ali and Frazier fought again in 1974, after Frazier had lost his crown. This time, Ali won in a unanimous decision, making him the lead challenger for the heavyweight title.

He took it from George Foreman later that year in a fight in Zaire dubbed "The Rumble in the Jungle," a spectacularly hyped bout for which Ali moved to Africa for the summer, followed by crowds of chanting locals wherever he went. A three-day music festival featuring James Brown and B.B. King preceded the fight. Finally, Ali delivered a historic performance in the ring, employing a new strategy dubbed the "rope-a-dope," goading the favored Foreman into attacking him, then leaning back into the ropes in a defensive stance and waiting for Foreman to tire. Ali then went on the attack, knocking out Foreman in the eighth round. The maneuver has been copied by many other champions since.

The third fight in the Ali-Frazier trilogy followed in 1975, the "Thrilla in Manila" that is now regarded as one of the best boxing matches of all time. Ali won in a technical knockout in the 15th round.

Ali successfully defended his title until 1978, when he was beaten by a young Leon Spinks, and then quickly took it back. He retired in 1979, when he was 37, but, seeking to replenish his dwindling personal fortune, returned in 1980 for a title match against Larry Holmes, which he lost. Ali lost again, to Trevor Berbick, the following year. Finally, Ali retired for good.

The following year, Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.

"I'm in no pain," he told The New York Times. "A slight slurring of my speech, a little tremor. Nothing critical. If I was in perfect health — if I had won my last two fights — if I had no problem, people would be afraid of me. Now they feel sorry for me. They thought I was Superman. Now they can go, 'He's human, like us. He has problems.' ''

Even as his health gradually declined, Ali — who switched to more mainstream branches of Islam — threw himself into humanitarian causes, traveling to Lebanon in 1985 and Iraq in 1990 to seek the release of American hostages. In 1996, he lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, lifting the torch with shaking arms. With each public appearance he seemed more feeble, a stark contrast to his outsized aura. He continued to be one of the most recognizable people in the world.

He traveled incessantly for many years, crisscrossing the globe in appearances in which he made money but also pushed philanthropic causes. He met with presidents, royalty, heads of state, the Pope. He told "People" magazine that his largest regret was not playing a more intimate role in the raising of his children. But he said he did not regret boxing. "If I wasn't a boxer, I wouldn't be famous," he said. "If I wasn't famous, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now."

In 2005, President George W. Bush honored Ali with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and his hometown of Louisville opened the Muhammad Ali Center, chronicling his life but also as a forum for promoting tolerance and respect.

Divorced three times and the father of nine children — one of whom, Laila, become a boxer — Ali married his last wife, Yolanda "Lonnie" Williams, in 1986; they lived for a long time in Berrien Springs, Michigan, then moved to Arizona.

In recent years, Ali's health began to suffer dramatically. There was a death scare in 2013, and last year he was rushed to the hospital after being found unresponsive. He recovered and returned to his new home in Arizona.

In his final years, Ali was barely able to speak. Asked to share his personal philosophy with NPR in 2009, Ali let his wife read his essay:

"I never thought of the possibility of failing, only of the fame and glory I was going to get when I won," Ali wrote. "I could see it. I could almost feel it. When I proclaimed that I was the greatest of all time, I believed in myself, and I still do."

[Darth Yan]

Wow. That's....just sad.

[SCRawl]

For many people about half a generation older than I am, he was a true icon. He will long be remembered.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

"I'm so fast, I could turn out the lights and be in bed before the room gets dark" - favorite Ali quote

He will be missed.

[Broomstick]

I did not always agree with Mr. Ali, but I have always admired his integrity. His absence will be noted.

[Flagg]

He was the greatest there ever was. I don't care about your or my views on his politics, he was the greatest. Just hope he went easy, and I'm glad his suffering is over.

[Sidewinder]

He left the world with far more dignity than others who I can name.

Rest in peace, Mr. Ali.

[Terralthra]

President and First Lady Obamas' statement on Muhammad Ali says it all, really.

Muhammad Ali was The Greatest. Period. If you just asked him, he’d tell you. He’d tell you he was the double greatest; that he’d “handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder into jail.”

But what made The Champ the greatest – what truly separated him from everyone else – is that everyone else would tell you pretty much the same thing.

Like everyone else on the planet, Michelle and I mourn his passing. But we’re also grateful to God for how fortunate we are to have known him, if just for a while; for how fortunate we all are that The Greatest chose to grace our time.

In my private study, just off the Oval Office, I keep a pair of his gloves on display, just under that iconic photograph of him – the young champ, just 22 years old, roaring like a lion over a fallen Sonny Liston. I was too young when it was taken to understand who he was – still Cassius Clay, already an Olympic Gold Medal winner, yet to set out on a spiritual journey that would lead him to his Muslim faith, exile him at the peak of his power, and set the stage for his return to greatness with a name as familiar to the downtrodden in the slums of Southeast Asia and the villages of Africa as it was to cheering crowds in Madison Square Garden.

“I am America,” he once declared. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me – black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.”

That’s the Ali I came to know as I came of age – not just as skilled a poet on the mic as he was a fighter in the ring, but a man who fought for what was right. A man who fought for us. He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.

He wasn’t perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved. But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes – maybe because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves. Later, as his physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace and reconciliation around the world. We saw a man who said he was so mean he’d make medicine sick reveal a soft spot, visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a torch, and fight his greatest fight of all on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that ravaged his body, but couldn’t take the spark from his eyes.

Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it. Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family, and we pray that the greatest fighter of them all finally rests in peace.

###

[Flagg]

That's great stuff. One of the very few badass motherfuckers whom could cash the checks his mouth wrote.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

He was the greatest there ever was. I don't care about your or my views on his politics, he was the greatest. Just hope he went easy, and I'm glad his suffering is over.

I'm with you on this. There shall never be another of his like to grace the ring again.

[Flagg]

Thanks so much for that video. I'd seen clips, but never a compilation like that. The man had the closest thing to ESP in dodging punches there can be. It's so sad the way he suffered from his fighting career with Parkinson's and such. And dying from respiratory complications is, unfortunately, a very bad way to go. Hopefully he was loaded with opioids and just snowed as he passed.

[Flagg]

He was the greatest there ever was. I don't care about your or my views on his politics, he was the greatest. Just hope he went easy, and I'm glad his suffering is over.

I'm with you on this. There shall never be another of his like to grace the ring again.

The only other modern athlete I can think of rising to his level is Michael Jordan. And that may just be hype from when I was growing up in elementary school.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Jordan was a gifted athlete, certainly, though he did get full of himself for a bit. I do resent how his critics tried to use his dad's death in a pathetic attempt to get back at him.

[Broomstick]

Thanks so much for that video. I'd seen clips, but never a compilation like that. The man had the closest thing to ESP in dodging punches there can be.

It's also a great illustration of his "float like a butterfly" - that man was light on his feet for anyone, much less a heavyweight.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Thanks so much for that video. I'd seen clips, but never a compilation like that. The man had the closest thing to ESP in dodging punches there can be. It's so sad the way he suffered from his fighting career with Parkinson's and such. And dying from respiratory complications is, unfortunately, a very bad way to go. Hopefully he was loaded with opioids and just snowed as he passed.

No probs. I've had the privilege of seeing some of those bouts live on television growing up, and it was a pleasant trip down memory lane.

Hopefully, there was no pain at the end. He deserved that much.

It's also a great illustration of his "float like a butterfly" - that man was light on his feet for anyone, much less a heavyweight.

He was an artiste.

The heavyweights that have come after him, especially thugs like Mike Tyson...not so much.

[Flagg]

Jordan was a gifted athlete, certainly, though he did get full of himself for a bit. I do resent how his critics tried to use his dad's death in a pathetic attempt to get back at him.

I don't recall that, but don't want to sidetrack the thread, can you PM with the details?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

See PMs.

[aerius]

It's also a great illustration of his "float like a butterfly" - that man was light on his feet for anyone, much less a heavyweight.

He was an artiste.

That he was. His fight smarts were also off the charts, the famous "rope-a-dope" wasn't just that, it was also a brilliant use of clinching along with blocking & rolling with punches to wear out Foreman and limit the exchanges.

The heavyweights that have come after him, especially thugs like Mike Tyson...not so much.

I think Tyson gets too much flack, his style is often considered to be rather crude & brutish but there's actually a fair bit of art & technique to it in his earlier days. For instance, his use of the D'Amato shift, if you watch his highlights a lot of his KOs are from using this technique.

[Borgholio]

I remember watching the opening ceremony of the Atlanta Olympic games on TV and the crowd went wild when Ali took the torch and lit the flame.

[Broomstick]

The thing the always stuck in my mind was when he refused to fight in Viet Nam. No one could deny he was a fighter and a brave man, but he refused to go to war for moral and ethical reasons regardless of the cost to himself. No one could force him to do what he considered wrong and immoral. Coming at the time it did caused a lot of people to question the rightness of that war. That's what I mean by integrity. At the time to a lot of people he was a big, scary, violent black man (or worse) but his stance, his willingness to risk jail and give up his career, was when even his enemies began to respect him, and that was a long time ago when he was a young man. He was not a perfect man but he was a deeply ethical man.

[Raw Shark]

“I am America,” he once declared. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me – black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.”

That’s the Ali I came to know as I came of age – not just as skilled a poet on the mic as he was a fighter in the ring, but a man who fought for what was right. A man who fought for us. He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.

+1. R.I.P.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I think Tyson gets too much flack, his style is often considered to be rather crude & brutish but there's actually a fair bit of art & technique to it in his earlier days. For instance, his use of the D'Amato shift, if you watch his highlights a lot of his KOs are from using this technique.

In his earlier days, he employed footwork, and technique, as well as power, but as his career progressed, he moved away from what d'Amato had taught him, and went for pure power and the quick KO in the first round. Certainly, the media didn't help this.

Nor did the endless succession of opponents who attempted to fight Tyson's fight instead of their own. That further encouraged him that he was clearly going with something which worked.

Until Buster Douglas beat him, not through skill, but through sheer attrition.

And, Tyson's career post-prison was just an endless self-parody for media consumption. I mean, what else can you say, when the man stooped to biting to try and beat the underwhelming Evander Holyfield?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

The thing the always stuck in my mind was when he refused to fight in Viet Nam. No one could deny he was a fighter and a brave man, but he refused to go to war for moral and ethical reasons regardless of the cost to himself. No one could force him to do what he considered wrong and immoral. Coming at the time it did caused a lot of people to question the rightness of that war. That's what I mean by integrity. At the time to a lot of people he was a big, scary, violent black man (or worse) but his stance, his willingness to risk jail and give up his career, was when even his enemies began to respect him, and that was a long time ago when he was a young man. He was not a perfect man but he was a deeply ethical man.

Another quality missing from many professional athletes today. And, their fans. Had Ali come up during the 2000s, where an overpaid shortstop cheating just to be mediocre, and fans finding nothing wrong with that, he would've been derided in a thousand cynical videos posted by a thousand smarmy asshole YouTubers. And in the comments sections of said vids.

[Crown]

The thing the always stuck in my mind was when he refused to fight in Viet Nam. No one could deny he was a fighter and a brave man, but he refused to go to war for moral and ethical reasons regardless of the cost to himself. No one could force him to do what he considered wrong and immoral. Coming at the time it did caused a lot of people to question the rightness of that war. That's what I mean by integrity. At the time to a lot of people he was a big, scary, violent black man (or worse) but his stance, his willingness to risk jail and give up his career, was when even his enemies began to respect him, and that was a long time ago when he was a young man. He was not a perfect man but he was a deeply ethical man.

Another quality missing from many professional athletes today. And, their fans. Had Ali come up during the 2000s, where an overpaid shortstop cheating just to be mediocre, and fans finding nothing wrong with that, he would've been derided in a thousand cynical videos posted by a thousand smarmy asshole YouTubers. And in the comments sections of said vids.

How would his views on interracial marriage being against the will of God been greeted by these YouTubers?

EDIT :: I don't know if he ever recanted his obvious racism, and I don't begrudge him to have negative opinions about whites during that era. I think his treatment of Frazier was scandalous and shameful - which to his credit he did recant and I certainly won't begrudge Ali's talent. It was mesmerising.

[Broomstick]

The thing the always stuck in my mind was when he refused to fight in Viet Nam. No one could deny he was a fighter and a brave man, but he refused to go to war for moral and ethical reasons regardless of the cost to himself. No one could force him to do what he considered wrong and immoral. Coming at the time it did caused a lot of people to question the rightness of that war. That's what I mean by integrity. At the time to a lot of people he was a big, scary, violent black man (or worse) but his stance, his willingness to risk jail and give up his career, was when even his enemies began to respect him, and that was a long time ago when he was a young man. He was not a perfect man but he was a deeply ethical man.

Another quality missing from many professional athletes today. And, their fans. Had Ali come up during the 2000s, where an overpaid shortstop cheating just to be mediocre, and fans finding nothing wrong with that, he would've been derided in a thousand cynical videos posted by a thousand smarmy asshole YouTubers. And in the comments sections of said vids.

How would his views on interracial marriage being against the will of God been greeted by these YouTubers?

Probably wouldn't come up - in 1960 opposition to inter-racial marriage was the norm by an overwhelming margin. Even among people who didn't feel a need to outlaw it the sentiment was usually negative towards.

Society has changed immensely since then in that regard. If Ali had been a millennial likely he never would have held that opinion.

Later in life he seems to have reconsidered - he had both a Jewish and a white Christian son-in-law and apparently by that time it was a non-issue.