Muhammad Ali anniversary: Tribute to the boxing great a year after he passed away
TODAY marks one year since the world lost possibly its greatest ever sportsman - Muhammad Ali.
The Greatest died aged 74, with his wife Yolanda — known as Lonnie — and his seven daughters and two sons at his bedside.
He had children — Maryum, Rasheda, Jamillah, Hana, Laila, Khaliah, Miya, Muhammad Junior — with his first three wives and adopted Assad, then aged five, after marrying Lonnie in 1986.
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The fighter, who changed his name from Cassius Clay in 1964 after becoming a Muslim and joining the Nation of Islam, had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for more than 30 years.
Once asked how he would like to be remembered, he said: "As a man who never sold out his people.
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"But if that's too much, then just a good boxer. I won't even mind if you don't mention how pretty I was."
Born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky, Ali began his professional boxing career at the age of 18 and for the next 21 years the Louisville Lip dominated the world of boxing.
It is said that in his lifetime, more was written about Ali than any other living person, including Presidents and Royalty and certainly any other sports star.
Outspoken Ali won Olympic gold in Rome in 1960 and later claimed he threw the medal into the Ohio River in protest at the treatment of blacks.
He was given a replacement medal at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, where he lit the torch.
His first title shot came against heavily favoured Sonny Liston, where Ali famously claimed he would "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee."
Clay and Liston fought for six rounds but when Liston refused to answer the bell for the seventh, Clay, then aged 22, became the youngest boxer to take a title from a reigning heavyweight.
Quizzed by reporters, he famously answered: “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Vietcong.”
He was jailed for five years and fined the maximum ten thousand dollars for refusing the draft.
Ali did not fight again for three and a half years, the prime of his boxing life lost.
It was 1974 before he regained the world heavyweight title, knocking out George Foreman in the famous Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa, Zaire.
Muhammad Ali was one of the most outspoken sportsmen of all time
The following year, after beating Britain’s Joe Bugner in Malaysia, Ali flew to the Philippines where he beat Joe Frazier on a technical knockout after 14 rounds of the fight of the century that will forever be known as The Thrilla in Manila.
Ali suffered a severe pounding – especially to his head - in his epic fright with Frazier and many believe he should have quit the ring there and then.
He lost his title again briefly to Leon Spinks in 1978 and then won it back the same year to become the only boxer to be crowned World Heavyweight champion three times.
He fought twice more and lost. Ali retired in 1981 after losing to Trevor Berbick after ten rounds in Nassau in the Bahamas.
Soon after quitting the ring, Ali began showing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and the condition was diagnosed in 1984.
He said: “This diagnosis was difficult to accept. At first there were times when I could push all thoughts of the disease out of my mind.
"Later when the physical symptoms could not be ignored, there were periods of frustration and depression which I had to fight as vigorously as any opponent I ever faced in the ring.
“I think maybe my Parkinson’s is God’s way of reminding me what is important.
"It slowed me down and caused me to listen rather than talk. Actually people pay more attention to me now because I don’t talk so much.”
Despite suffering from the disease, Ali travelled the world as the United Nations Messenger of Peace, even visiting Afghanistan in 2002 to highlight the plight of its people.
And when he appeared at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in July 2012, Lonnie held him upright while the Olympic flag was raised.
Muhammad Ali said: “When I’m gone they’ll think what they will, but my record speaks for itself.
“They’ll have to say I was the fastest heavyweight that ever lived. They’ll have to say that I was the best looking - my face was unscratched and unmarked.
“They’ll have to say I was the most entertaining and the most clever. They’ll say that even without a college education, I was smart enough to lecture at colleges and debate the best minds on television.
“They’ll have to say I was the only real world champion.”