Brutal battle: Doctors say Ali's Parkinson's was likely caused by the thousands of punches he took during a career that saw him win 56 of his 61 bouts.
Inspiration: President Obama said he kept a pair of Ali's gloves in his study at the White House, under a photograph of the young champion 'roaring like a lion over fallen Sonny Liston'.
Champion: Ali will be remembered for his stunning victories over the likes of Sonny Liston, George Foreman in the famous 'Rumble in the Jungle', Joe Frazier in the 'Thrilla in Manila' and his gold medal victory at the Olympics in Rome.
Charisma: He was fast of fist and foot — lip, too — a heavyweight champion who promised to shock the world and did. He floated. He stung. Mostly he thrilled, even after the punches had taken their toll and his voice barely rose above a whisper.
Dominance: Ali fought in three different decades, finished with a record of with 37 knockouts and was the first man to win heavyweight titles three times. But the effect of the punches lingered long after most of his money was gone. 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.
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 , at the height of the Vietnam War, Ali was drafted to serve in the U. 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. 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.
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. Supreme Court, which in June 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 round duel touted as "the fight of the century. That fight began one of boxing's and sport's greatest rivalries. Ali and Frazier fought again in , after Frazier had lost his crown. This time, Ali won in a unanimous decision, making him the lead challenger for the heavyweight title.
The book also contains grim, disturbing material about the three-time heavyweight champion, who died last year at Ali the boxer absorbed "an obscene amount of punishment," Eig concluded, taking into account amateur and professional bouts, as well as sparring sessions.
Eig said Ali thought if he allowed barrages while sparring, he would get better at taking shots in big fights and outlasting potent opponents, "and it was obviously incredibly dangerous.
In that second chapter of Ali's career, Eig said, he took more blows than he delivered and missed more often than his opponents did -- and the ratios got worse and worse. Meanwhile, as Eig details, Ali was a target for the unscrupulous, had a huge entourage and failed to conserve his money. New evidence of the damage boxing did to Ali's health comes from ASU's study of his public speaking from to that determined his speech slurred and slowed years before a Parkinson's syndrome diagnosis in or even his retirement from the ring in ' And Ali's fight physician, Ferdie Pacheco, told Eig that as early as , after Ali's brutal first fight with Joe Frazier, he began showing signs of permanent impairment but persisted in pursuing big paydays.
Eig said he was stunned when Ali's second wife told him of a sordid episode that occurred just hours before that "Fight of the Century" with Frazier at Madison Square Garden. Khalilah Camacho-Ali, whose name was Belinda Boyd when she married Ali, recounted finding him that day with a naked prostitute in a room at the New Yorker Hotel across from the Garden. And, according to the book, Camacho-Ali threatened to kill them and picked up a steak knife.
But she didn't stab the woman or Ali, who suffered his first loss that night to the undefeated Frazier and didn't lose again until two years and 11 fights later, when he faced Ken Norton. Two hours before his round battle with Norton, Ali was in bed with two prostitutes, according to Camacho-Ali and another one of Eig's interviewees for the book. Eig said he interviewed Camacho-Ali for more than eight hours over several visits and that she alleged that Ali committed domestic violence against her in , before he fought George Foreman in the African nation then known as Zaire.
It was shortly before that trip that Ali met Veronica Porche, who later became his third wife. I don't think anyone else saw the fight itself, but there were other people who said they saw Belinda with black eyes. Porche confirmed in the book that Camacho-Ali was hiding two black eyes beneath sunglasses the day after the alleged incident. The depth of Eig's digging to comprehend someone he calls "one of the most popular men in the history of the planet" -- and how Ali got to be who he was -- is on display in the book's first three sentences:.
His great-grandfather was a slave. His grandfather was a convicted murderer who shot a man through the heart in a quarrel over a quarter.
His father was a drinker, a bar fighter, a womanizer, and a wife beater who once in a drunken rage slashed his eldest son with a knife.
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