Muhammad Ali will make his final journey through Louisville to his funeral next Friday following the death at the age of 74 of boxing’s greatest superstar.
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The flood of tributes that have been pouring in for Mr Muhammad Ali since early yesterday morning is testimony to the iconic status of the American who declared himself the world’s greatest boxer and proved it with not only his ring craft, but his phenomenal ability to promote the sport. Frazier won the 15-round fight in a unanimous decision, and this became Ali’s first professional defeat.
“Our hearts are literally hurting”.
Daniel Wilson was one year behind Ali at Central High School and remembered he was so committed to his conditioning that he didn’t get on the school bus like everybody else.
It was not immediately clear when they would travel.
Flowers, cards and signs have been placed outside his childhood home in the city, and flags have been flying at half-mast.
“[He’s] someone who has been very kind and honest and heartfelt to everyone”, Spry said.
“There will be people coming from all over”.
A private funeral service for Ali will be held in Louisville, Kentucky.
“He was a citizen of the world and would want people from all walks of life to be able to attend his funeral”, said the family spokesman, Bob Gunnell.
Gunnell said the services will begin with a procession through the streets of the city.
The cause of death was septic shock due to unspecified natural causes, a family spokesman said on Saturday.
Gunnell said Ali had sought medical attention for a cough, but his condition rapidly deteriorated. He is survived by his nine children, including daughter Laila – who like her father became a world champion boxer – and his fourth wife, Lonnie.
“We all tried to stay strong and whispered in his ear, ‘You can go now”. No one had ever seen anything like that.
Muhammad Ali is pictured with Violet Montgomery in the 1970s with her two grandchildren.
His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing, but he stood his ground, Obama noted.
One man, Ali, understood racism; the other, Cosell, experienced anti-Semitism.
US President Barack Obama said Ali was “a man who fought for us” and placed him in the pantheon of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.
Meanwhile, George Foreman has paid tribute to the man who famously beat him in the Rumble in the Jungle. You changed my Life. “I don’t have to be what you tell me to be, ‘” Eig said.
Ali held the far less glorious position when he was a quick-witted teenager named Cassius Clay growing up in a mostly black neighborhood in west Louisville.
Once an underdog boxer, Ali told boxing fans that he would “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” before fighting Sonny Liston.
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Last year, Smith honored Ali at Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year ceremony, where the Legacy Award was renamed the Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award. “He took on the Supreme Court”. He said he hoped this generation’s athletes will learn to be humanitarians and civil rights activists like Ali.
