“It was like a huge amount,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday. At first, he recalled it being “three-hundred-some-odd-thousand dollars,” then raised it to “a half-a-million dollars or something like that.” (According to one write-up of the event, it was $350,000.)

The presidential candidate said Ali had taught him about diversity and called him an “amazing example of strength and kindness and ability and athleticism.”

In December, after two Islamic extremists killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., Mr. Trump made his proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States.

Shortly afterward, Ali issued a statement that condemned the shootings, but also said:

“We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda. They have alienated many from learning about Islam.”

Even though Ali’s statement did not name Mr. Trump, many saw it as a rebuke of the candidate. The statement was titled “Presidential Candidates Proposing to Ban Muslim Immigration to the United States.”

Mr. Trump, on Saturday, said that he did not “believe that was about me.”

“He never mentioned the name or anything like that,” he said, adding that if it were about him, Ali “would have mentioned the name.”

“No, that wasn’t about me. That was about other things,” Mr. Trump said.

Bob Gunnell, an Ali family spokesman, also said on Saturday that the statement was not directed at Mr. Trump, but at “extremists and jihadists.”