The former boxer died in a Phoenix-area hospital where he spent the past two days, family spokesman Bob Gunnell told NBC News. It is sad day for the world of boxing. “To put him as a boxer is an injustice”.
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Ali enjoyed a popularity that transcended the world of sports, even though he rarely appeared in public in his later years.
“He talked trash but he backed it up”, Dez said.
He famously said he could he “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” in the ring.
Ali’s decision to refuse induction into the Army in 1967 was as courageous an act as staring down Liston or allowing Foreman – by the numbers, the most devastating heavyweight champion in history – to pound away at his arms, shoulders and flanks for seven rounds before dispatching him as neatly as a hunter takes out a deer with a high-powered rifle.
But Ali became much more than a colorful and interesting athlete.
“A man of action and principle, he was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War and willingly paid a price, taking a stand that forced him out of the ring for over three years during the primetime of his career”, Fischer said at the flag-lowering ceremony. Ali passed away earlier in the evening according to a statement released by his family.
NBC News Medical Contributor Dr. Natalie Azar said Ali’s seemingly swift decline wasn’t surprising given his age and decades-long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He became the unofficial spokesman for millions of blacks and oppressed people around the world because of his refusal to compromise his opinions and stand up to white authorities.
Mayweather’s great rival Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines said the world had lost “a giant”.
The council says Ali was not only a boxing champion, but was “a true fighter for human rights and social justice”.
Nearly everyone in Louisville has a personal story about Ali – whether it’s a favourite fight, a glance through a auto window, or a trip to his boyhood home at 3302 Grand Avenue, which just opened as a museum last week, the interior recreated as if Ali were still living there as a precocious boy in the 1950s.
“Humble people, I’ve found, don’t get very far”, he once told a reporter.
His taunts could be brutal.
“Ali’s two-time opponent ‘Aussie” Joe Bugner, who twice went the distance with the great fighter, said his vast talent would ensure he was remembered as “the best ever”. He also dubbed Frazier a “gorilla” but later apologized and said it was all to promote the fight.
In a possible preview of Bill Clinton’s eulogy, he and his wife Hillary, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said Ali was “a blend of beauty and grace, speed and strength that may never be matched again”.
“That was just one aspect of a multi-faceted man and I loved him in a sense. And I wouldn’t even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was”.
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Ali died surrounded by family at 9:10 p.m. Friday. “Muhammad Ali was my friend, my idol, my hero”, Pele said on Instagram.
