“This is not a political statement, this is not about politics, this is about how Muhammad Ali lived his life”.
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The importance of Muhammad Ali goes beyond boxing and embeds itself in the turbulent times in the 1960s, during the African-American Civil Rights Movement, when the boxer refused military service in Vietnam and called for the equality of all people regardless of religion, social status and skin colour. Did he not know when to stop taking the punches? Now the goal is not to get hit, I give you that but the goal is also to engage and you have to put yourself at risk to throw punches…My son said to me yesterday, I am watching all these Ali fights, they are so exciting, they look like they are from a movie.
“Number one: he did not know when to stop taking punches and he never knew when to quit”.
“Ali aged young, but only because of the beatings over the years. I’m happy for that, even though I will miss him deeply”.
Most laughed at the idea of a 22-year-old Ali defeating the fearsome and hard-hitting Sonny Liston, but that’s what he did when the fighters met in 1964 – and then again a year later. The incredible details of three-time heavyweight champion Ali’s final moments were made public by his daughter Hana in an emotional post on Twitter.
Larry Holmes dominated a way-past-his-prime Ali but, with the greatest left jab in heavyweight history, Holmes may well have dominated an in-his-prime Ali. At the end of the 10th round, Ali’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, stopped the fight. “When I think of my father, I think of people like Nelson Mandela and people like that”.
Smith and Lennox will join a group that includes Ali’s nephew Ibn Ali-Muhammad, Jerry Ellis (brother of Ali’s former sparring partner, Jimmy Ellis), family friend John Ramsey, the boxer’s former brother-in-law Komawi Ali, and Ali’s cousins, John Grady and Jan Wadell. “He stayed out of the ring for three-and-a-half years”.
“He once told me ‘football is more lovely than boxing, but I am more handsome than you'”.
The cause of Parkinson’s is unknown, though both genetic and environmental factors are thought to play a role.
Doctors and campaigners working in the field praised Ali for his courage in fighting the disease.
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He was hospitalized on Monday, Sky News reported, having suffered from a respiratory illness – a condition related to his Parkinson’s disease.
