United States gossip website radaronline.com quoted an anonymous source as saying Ali was on life support and that anxious family members had gathered at his bedside.
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There was no official update about Ali’s condition on Friday, Bob Gunnell, the family spokesman, had said that Ali was in a fair condition and was only expected to be in a hospital for a brief period.
Ali, 74, was diagnosed with Parkison’s disease in the 1980s.
Four of Ali’s nine children are at the hospital after, sources said, doctors told them the future survival of the champ was “uncertain”.
“The condition is very grave”, a source close to Ali s family told AFP on condition on anonymity as concern mounted for the beloved sporting icon.
A spokesman for Ali said in a statement earlier Thursday that the former heavyweight champion is being treated at an unidentified hospital for a respiratory issue. In front of more than 60,000 fans, Ali knocked Foreman down just before the end of the eighth round in what has been called “arguably the greatest sporting event of the 20th century”.
Even so, Ali’s youthful proclamation of himself as “the greatest” rang true until the end for the millions of people worldwide who admired him for his courage both inside and outside the ring.
Ali battled Parkinson’s disease for 32 years.
“It’s extraordinarily grave. It’s a matter of hours”, the source said of Ali’s condition.
Muhammad Ali has suffered Parkinson for three decades and seen trembling while lighting the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996. He was one of boxing’s great heavyweights and a multiple-time champion.
Although he has kept a low profile in recent years, Ali attended a Celebrity Fight Night in April to benefit a Parkinson’s treatment facility in his name.
Ali was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on January 17, 1942, as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., a name shared with a 19th century slavery abolitionist. Laila Ali, herself a former world champion boxer, wrote.
SportsCenter reported that Ali was previously hospitalized twice between 2014 and 2015 for a severe urinary tract infection.
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This latest development in the Muhammad Ali saga comes less than a week after his childhood home in Louisville was opened to the public.
