Ali Dies
Muhammad Ali, the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion, died in June 2016 at the age of 74 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Hospitalized with respiratory problems, he succumbed to septic shock, according to his family's spokesman. His death drew tributes from around the world, reflecting a reputation that extended far beyond the ring. Many commentators and Sports Illustrated, which named him "Sportsman of the Century" in a 1999 honor, regarded him as among the most significant athletes of the twentieth century, though "greatest" is of course a matter of opinion, one Ali himself loudly encouraged.
He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1942. He began boxing as a boy and won a light heavyweight gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Turning professional, he shocked the sport in 1964 by defeating Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title. Soon afterward he announced his membership in the Nation of Islam and took the name Muhammad Ali, a choice that provoked hostility from many in the press and public but became a landmark in debates over Black identity in America.
His career was defined by both skill and controversy. In 1967 he refused induction into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, citing his religious beliefs. He was stripped of his title and boxing license, and convicted of draft evasion, and he did not fight for more than three years at the height of his athletic prime. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971. He returned to the ring and fought a celebrated trilogy with Joe Frazier, including the 1975 "Thrilla in Manila," and in 1974 he regained the title by defeating George Foreman in Zaire, the "Rumble in the Jungle." He won the heavyweight championship a third time in 1978 and retired in 1981.
In 1984 Ali was publicly known to have Parkinson's syndrome, and his speech and movement gradually declined. Yet he remained a beloved public figure. He lit the cauldron at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, a moment many remember as deeply moving, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005. He devoted much of his later life to humanitarian causes and to the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville.
His funeral in Louisville was a multi-day event, including a procession through the city's streets and an interfaith memorial service attended by political leaders, athletes, and ordinary admirers. Ali's legacy endures in boxing, but also in the broader idea that an athlete can be a figure of conscience, whose willingness to take unpopular stands, though divisive in his time, came to be widely admired in retrospect.