Hollywood actor Will Smith and former heavyweight boxers Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson were pallbearers at the funeral, before an inter-faith service was held at the KFC Yum! Centre to celebrate Ali’s life.
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Some 15,000 free tickets were snapped up for the event, which was attended by celebrities including David Beckham and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and broadcast to millions of viewers around the world.
“Being a man of faith, he realised he would never be in full control of his life”, Clinton said to applause. “He refused to be imprisoned by a disease that kept him hamstrung longer than Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa”, he mused.
The service also saw eulogies from Muhammad’s widow Lonnie and daughters Rasheda and Maryum.
“I can just hear Muhammad say now, ‘Well, I thought I should be eulogized by at least one president, ‘” Clinton told the crowd. “He saw the good soul in everyone”.
He said: “His jab knocked some sense into us and pushed us to expand our imagination”.
“You had to live in his time”, comedian Billy Crystal somberly stated in his eulogy of the former boxing champ. “As he moved easily around the world, the rich and powerful were drawn to him, but he was drawn to the poor and forgotten”, she said.
“He was amusing, he was attractive, he was the most flawless athlete you ever saw and those were his own words!”
“He taught us life is best when we build bridges between us, not walls”.
“This week we lost an icon”, Obama said Thursday in a video message honoring The Champ. It was God’s will to take you home. “And every day you have to focus and concentrate on making sure you’re living your life in a way that it illuminates the things you want illuminated, and the things that were illuminated today were his love, and his heart, and his unconditional appreciation for all people of every race and color”. Now you’re shaking up the world in death. “And til we meet again, fly, butterfly, fly”.
He was one of the most celebrated athletes of the 20th century, lost three years of his boxing career for refusing U.S. military service during the Vietnam War.
Mourners chanted Ali’s name as his wife Lonnie took the stage, her face obscured by her wide-brimmed black hat.
Ali always said he wished to be buried in his hometown, where he learned to box and fought his first fight. “We must speak out, refuse to follow the path of conformity to the rules of the game in life”.
“I think he decided before he could have possibly worked it all out and before fate and time could work their will on him, he decided he would never be disempowered, he decided not his grace nor his place nor the expectations of others would strip from him the power to write his own story”, he continued. Black and pretty was an oxymoron.
Mr Erdogan was initially due to address the service but was removed from the list of speakers after other names were added.
The memorial service started shortly after 3 p.m. ET, about an hour late due to a delay in the Friday-morning processional. The ceremony opened with recitations from the Quran in this holiest months of Ramadan and traditional Islamic funeral song.
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A three-time world heavyweight champion, Ali died on Friday at the age of 74.
