Many, even in the African-American community, were perplexed – but few knew that after returning home to Jim Crow Louisville as the victor of Olympic gold, he’d been taunted with racial slurs and turned away from local restaurants. But my point is that as much as I love Muhammad Ali, and again I love him a ridiculous amount, that love is in no way unique.
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The family is expected to announce more speakers in the coming days.
Ali’s funeral will be held Friday in Louisville. Former US President Bill Clinton will give the eulogy at Ali’s funeral, along with comedian Billy Crystal and news anchor Bryant Gumbel. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) set to represent Mormonism at the event.
His body will pass the Muhammad Ali Centre, travel along Muhammad Ali Boulevard and through his former neighbourhood.
Mr Gunnell said Ali’s wife and nine children had been hopeful that his stay in hospital would be brief, but were called to his bedside when his condition became more serious.
Despite being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1984, soon after retiring, Ali political influence endured.
In Louisville, not even pouring rain Saturday could stop the flood of tributes for “The Greatest”.
It took a loss to Mr Trevor Berbick, in December 1981, for Mr Ali, then 40 years old, to finally throw in the towel. The boxing elements are imaginative and enthralling (you can watch any and all of Ali’s fights in video booths or spar in a boxing ring while being trained by Ali’s daughter).
Flowers, photos and letters were piled up at 3302 Grand Avenue in Louisville, the Kentucky city at the crossroads of the US Midwest and the deep South where Ali was raised and first started boxing. The guests piled flowers and boxing gloves around the marker designating it a historical site.
They came, black and white, young and old, boxing fans and not, to honor The Greatest.
Tributes have flooded in from around the world, with friends and fellow fighters paying Ali, who was voted Sports Personality of the Century, the highest accolades.
Asked how he wanted Ali to be remembered, he said: “I want Muhammad to be remembered as a humanitarian, a loving, kind, sweet, good man”. “But he only has one hometown”. In those years, the Muslim world was experiencing a post-colonial era defined by upheaval, with most developing nations taking sides in the Cold War, allying themselves to varying degrees with the United States or the Soviet Union.
In their little pink house in Louisville’s west end, the brothers liked to wrestle and play cards and shoot hoops.
“To put him as a boxer is an injustice”, said Foreman.
“I personally have been sad for a long time”. There’s a picture I have at home of me and Ali at the ’96 Olympics.
“When I came back into boxing (in 1987) he’d retired, and I realised how many years I’d missed his friendship, I could have been closer to him”. “All the kids jumped in and he rode them around the block”, she remembered.
“She said: “Really? I met Muhammad Ali, he was on the street saying how pretty and how lovely he was”.
“He’s done so much for Louisville”.
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Wood’s favorite Ali fights are the third meeting between him and archival Joe Frazier – “It was like they were fighting to the death” – and when he regained the title as an underdog against George Foreman in 1974’s ‘Rumble In The Jungle, ‘ seven years after being stripped of the crown for draft evasion during the Vietnam War, a decision overturned by the Supreme Court.
