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, 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 Marcellus 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.
Muhammad Ali, right, attacks Alex Mitoff in the
sixth round in which Ali clobbered the
Argentinean to the canvas, on Oct. 7, 1961 in
Louisville, Ky. H.B. Littell / AP, file
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..
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