Shafaqna English | by Leila Yazdani- Mohamed Ali was a legendary boxer during the 20th century in the United States. He converted to Islam in 1965 and had a great influence on black youths who found Islam a cornerstone in their struggles against racism.
Muhammad Ali, the former heavyweight boxing champ, is called ‘The greatest fighter of the 20th century. The graceful footwork and the lightning punch indeed made him the first boxer to win the world heavyweight championship title three different times. Ali is the only man ever to win the world heavyweight boxing championship three times.
Who Was Muhammad Ali?
Muhammad Ali was a boxer, philanthropist, and social activist who is universally regarded as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. Ali became an Olympic gold medalist in 1960 and the world heavyweight boxing champion in 1964. Following his suspension for refusing military service in the Vietnam War, Ali reclaimed the heavyweight title two more times during the 1970s, winning famed bouts against Joe Frazier and George Foreman along the way. Ali retired from boxing in 1981 and devoted much of his time to philanthropy. He earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.
Ali was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville
Muhammad Ali was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. His original name was Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. He changed his name after he converted to Islam in 1964.
At the age of 12 Clay discovered his talent for boxing through an odd twist of fate
After his bike was stolen, Clay told police officer Joe Martin that he wanted to beat up the thief. “Well, you better learn how to fight before you start challenging people,” Martin reportedly told him at the time. In addition to being a police officer, Martin also trained young boxers at a local gym.
Clay started working with Martin to learn how to spar and soon began his boxing career. In his first amateur bout in 1954, he won the fight by split decision. Clay went on to win the 1956 Golden Gloves tournament for novices in the light heavyweight class. Three years later, he won the National Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions, as well as the Amateur Athletic Union’s national title for the light heavyweight division.
At an early age, young Clay showed that he wasn’t afraid of any bout
At an early age, young Clay showed that he wasn’t afraid of any bout—inside or outside of the ring. Growing up in the segregated South, he experienced racial prejudice and discrimination firsthand.
After advancing through the amateur ranks, he won a gold medal in the 175-pound division at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.
He made his professional debut on Oct. 29, 1960, when he defeated his first professional boxing opponent, Tunney Hunsaker.
In 1960, Clay won a spot on the U.S. Olympic boxing team and traveled to Rome to compete. At 6 feet, 3 inches tall, Clay was an imposing figure in the ring, but he also became known for his lightning speed and fancy footwork. After winning his first three bouts, Clay defeated Zbigniew Pietrzkowski of Poland to win the light-heavyweight Olympic gold medal.
After his Olympic victory, Clay was heralded as an American hero. He soon turned professional with the backing of the Louisville Sponsoring Group and continued overwhelming all opponents in the ring.
Clay attended mostly Black public schools
Clay attended mostly Black public schools, including Central High School in Louisville from 1956 to 1960. Clay often daydreamed in class and shadowboxed in the halls—he was training for the 1960 Olympics at the time—and his grades were so bad that some of his teachers wanted to hold him back from graduation. However, the school’s principal Atwood Wilson could see Clay’s potential and opposed this, sarcastically asking the staff, “Do you think I’m going to be the principal of a school that Cassius Clay didn’t finish?”
Ali, then Cassius Clay, was No. 175 in a graduating class of 175 in his Louisville high school. Some 47 years later, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of humanities from Princeton. Ali was married four times and had nine children.
Conversion to Islam
In 1964, Clay Jr. converted to Islam and joined the Nation of Islam. After conversion, he changed his name to Muhammad Ali.
He had announced after beating Sonny Liston to win the heavyweight title in 1964 that he converted to Islam and was a follower of the Nation of Islam.
The late boxing legend Mohammad Ali performed Hajj in 1972.
Vietnam War Protest and Supreme Court Case
According to his religious beliefs, Ali refused to be inducted into the US Army in the middle of the Vietnam War in 1967, which caused serious controversy across the country. He was convicted, which resulted in the deprivation of his first championship and grabbed huge headlines with the reason for his refusal.
Ali started a different kind of fight with his outspoken views against the Vietnam War. Drafted into the military in April 1967, he refused to serve because he was a practicing Muslim minister with religious beliefs that prevented him from fighting. He was arrested for committing a felony and almost immediately stripped of his world title and boxing license.
The U.S. Justice Department pursued a legal case against Ali and denied his claim for conscientious objector status. He was found guilty of violating Selective Service laws and sentenced to five years in prison in June 1967 but remained free while appealing his conviction.
Unable to compete professionally in the meantime, Ali missed more than three prime years of his athletic career. Following his suspension, Ali found refuge on Chicago’s South Side, where he lived from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s. He continued training, formed amateur boxing leagues, and fought whomever he could in local gyms.
Finally granted a license to fight in 1970 in Georgia, which did not have a statewide athletic commission, Ali returned to the ring at Atlanta’s City Auditorium on October 26 with a win over Jerry Quarry. A few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in June 1971, allowing Ali to fight regularly.
Ali retired from professional boxing on 26 June 1979
In his retirement, Ali devoted much of his time to philanthropy. Over the years, Ali supported the Special Olympics and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, among other organizations. In 1996, he lit the Olympic cauldron at the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, an emotional moment in sports history.
Ali traveled to numerous countries, including Mexico and Morocco, to help out those in need. In 1998, he was chosen to be a United Nations Messenger of Peace because of his work in developing nations.
In 1984, Ali announced that he had Parkinson
In 1984, Ali announced that he had Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative neurological condition. Despite the progression of Parkinson’s and the onset of spinal stenosis, he remained active in public life.
Ali raised funds for the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center in Phoenix, Arizona
Despite suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, Muhammad Ali devoted his life to activities for charity organizations. He was especially active for Jubilee 2000, the organization that campaigns for the cancellation of Third World debt. During the Gulf War in 1991, he met with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to negotiate the release of American hostages in Baghdad.
In 1996, he went to the Olympic games in Atlanta, Georgia. He suddenly appeared above the rim at the Olympic Stadium at the most dramatic moment of the Olympic Ceremony. He lit the torch and moved people to tears.
He battled Parkinson’s disease for about three decades. Throughout his career, he reportedly took about 29,000 punches to his head. This, doctors said, was possibly the cause of his Parkinson’s disease.
Declining Health and Death
Ali lived the final decade of his life in the Phoenix suburb of Paradise Valley, Arizona. A few years before his death, Ali underwent surgery for spinal stenosis, a condition causing the narrowing of the spine, which limited his mobility and ability to communicate. In early 2015, he battled pneumonia and was hospitalized for a severe urinary tract infection.
Ali died on June 3, 2016, in Scottsdale, Arizona, after being hospitalized for what was reportedly a respiratory issue. He was 74 years old.
Funeral and Memorial Service
Years before his passing, Ali had planned his memorial services, saying he wanted to be “inclusive of everyone, where we give as many people an opportunity that wants to pay their respects to me,” according to a family spokesman.
The three-day event, which took place in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, included an “I Am Ali” public arts festival, entertainment and educational offerings sponsored by the city, an Islamic prayer program, and a memorial service.
Before the memorial service, a funeral procession traveled 20 miles through Louisville, past Ali’s childhood home, his high school, the first boxing gym where he trained, and along Ali Boulevard as tens of thousands of fans tossed flowers on his hearse and cheered his name.
Muhammad Ali Center
Ali opened the Muhammad Ali Center, a multicultural center with a museum dedicated to his life and legacy, in his hometown of Louisville in 2005.
“I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given,” he said. “Many fans wanted to build a museum to acknowledge my achievements. I wanted more than a building to house my memorabilia. I wanted a place that would inspire people to be the best that they could be at whatever they chose to do, and to encourage them to be respectful of one another.”
He wanted to use his life and death as a teaching moment for young people
He wanted to use his life and his death as a teaching moment for young people, his country, and the world. In effect, he wanted to remind people who are suffering that he had seen the face of injustice—that he grew up during segregation and that during his early life, he was not free to be who he wanted to be. But he never became embittered enough to quit or to engage in violence.
Source: Radio.gov.pk, LaTimes, Denver Post, Biography