C. Ray Hall and Chris Kenning

The Courier-Journal

Three-time world champ and full-time world citizen

A driven, charismatic young athlete who lived up to his claim to be 'The Greatest'

Muhammad Ali, the Louisville-born boxing champion who inspired love and hate — and finally became a global symbol of peace and reconciliation — died Friday following respiratory complications at a hospital not far from his Arizona home. He was 74.

Ali's battle with Parkinson's disease since the 1980s caused increasing difficulty with movement and speech but it did little to diminish a towering legacy.

In Louisville, Mayor Greg Fischer ordered flags at all city government buildings to be lowered to half-staff Saturday and remain so until he was laid to rest.

“As a boxer, he became The Greatest, though his most lasting victories happened outside the ring. Muhammad leveraged his fame as a platform to promote peace, justice and humanitarian efforts around the world, while always keeping strong ties to his hometown,” Fischer said in a statement. “Today, Muhammad Ali’s fellow Louisvillians join the billions whose lives he touched worldwide in mourning his passing, celebrating his legacy, and committing to continue his fight to spread love and hope.”

Ali’s funeral will take place in Louisville, with plans to be announced Saturday.

"The Ali family would like to thank everyone for their thoughts, prayers, and support and asks for privacy at this time," family spokesman Bob Gunnell said in a statement.

His family took pains to shield the champion's declining health as he was hospitalized briefly at various times in recent years.

Even as his health declined, Ali appeared as late as 2015 at award ceremonies and fundraisers, and in recent years made visits to Louisville's Muhammad Ali Center, a museum opened in 2005 to celebrate his life and carry on his humanitarian efforts.

While Ali and his family recently kept homes in Louisville and the Phoenix area, he was as much a citizen of the world — often called the most recognizable person on Earth.

He was the first man to win the world heavyweight title three times. Then known as Cassius Clay, he won the first at 22 with an electrifying upset of 7-1 favorite Sonny Liston in 1964. The next day he announced his conversion to Islam and soon disclosed his new name, Muhammad Ali.

Ali's story — one of a driven, charismatic young athlete who lived up to his claim to be "The Greatest" — took on moral complexity three years into his reign as champion. Ali, who opposed the Vietnam War, refused induction into the Army in 1967 as a conscientious objector.

"I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong," he declared, later explaining, "No Viet Cong ever called me 'nigger.'"

Boxing authorities immediately stripped Ali of his title. Two months later, he was tried for draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison. Congressmen and columnists condemned him as cowardly and unpatriotic — a man who ruled a violent sport, then discovered his peaceful instincts only when his draft status was upgraded to 1-A, the group most likely to be called.

Later, in quieter times, former Courier-Journal sports columnist Dave Kindred described Ali with a word that might have once seemed unthinkable: "He was one thing, always. He was always brave."

Fellow boxing legend George Foreman, 67, told USA TODAY on Friday night it was a “sad time for everyone” and that he had been in close contact with the family for days, advising them to “remember Ali loved the press – he started the whole (publicity) thing. … We champs all really became one, so I can’t imagine things without my friend.”

MORE STORIES

Locals recall young Clay's vow to be champion

Sullivan | The Greatest, and much more

Ali wanted – and got – more than a museum

Cassius Clay 'big talker' & top athlete in HS

Timeline: Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. to Muhammad Ali to The Greatest

Complete coverage of Muhammad Ali

As Ali's legal appeal made its way through the courts, he stayed out of prison — but also out of the ring — from 1967-70.

"He is giving up millions of dollars to do what his conscience tells him is right," said the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Ali, meanwhile, made a living by speaking on college campuses.

He told one of those audiences: "I would like to say to you who think I have lost so much, I have gained everything. I have peace of heart; I have a clear, free conscience. And I'm proud. I wake up happy. I go to bed happy. And if I go to jail, I'll go to jail happy. Boys go to war and die for what they believe in, so I don't see why the world is so shook up over me suffering for what I believe."

Ali's conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971. He had already returned to the ring — defeating Gerry Cooney in Atlanta in 1970, then suffering his first loss, to Joe Frazier, in 1971.

He would fight two more epic battles against Frazier, as well as notable bouts against Ken Norton and George Foreman.

When Ali returned to the ring, he was a different fighter — taking the punishment he had once avoided because of his diminished speed and reflexes.

Ferdie Pacheco, the doctor in Ali's corner at many fights, once observed: "In the early days, he fought as if he had a glass jaw and was afraid to get hit. He had the hyper reflexes of a frightened man. He was so fast that you had the feeling, 'This guy is scared to death; he can't be that fast normally.'

"Well, he wasn't scared. He was fast beyond belief — and smart. Then he went into exile, and when he came back, he couldn't move like lightning anymore. Everyone wondered, 'What happens now when he gets hit?' That's when we learned something else about him. That sissy-looking, soft-looking, beautiful-looking, child-man was one of the toughest guys who ever lived."

Ali's looks were the subject of much study — by himself and others.

"I'm still pretty," he proclaimed after tough fights. "There was an aura about him," author George Plimpton said in an interview in 1990. "He glowed, sort of a strange color, like a statue bronzed gold. He shone as though he was possessed of some wonderful power that his skin just couldn't contain."

Norman Mailer wrote in 1975 that, upon seeing Ali, "women draw an audible breath. Men look down. They are reminded again of their lack of worth."

By the end of his career, the beauty in the ring had turned. Ali endured a surprising loss to Leon Spinks in 1978 — then avenged it with a victory that made him champion for the third time. Ali retired, then came back to fight — and lose badly — to Larry Holmes before ending it all with a loss to Trevor Berbick in 1981.

Boxing was just the start

A symbol of 1960s conflict and hope

But it was beyond the ring that he made his greatest impact

At 39, Ali retired from boxing for good with a record of 56 victories and five losses, with 37 knockouts.

But it was beyond the ring that he made his greatest impact.

"Muhammad Ali has gone through more periods and assumed more identities in his life than any person I've known," author Jack Newfield wrote in "Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times," a few years after his retirement.

"Man-child, con man, entertainer, poet, draft-dodger, rebel, evangelist, champion.… But if I had to put one label on him, it would be as a symbol of the 1960s. Those were rebellious, conflict-ridden times, but they were also a period of great hope."

Ali biographer Thomas Hauser said in a 2005 interview:

"Ali in the 1960s stood for two very important things. No. 1, every time he looked in the mirror and said, 'I'm so pretty,' what he was really saying before it became fashionable was, 'Black is beautiful.' And this was a time when a lot of black people thought it was better to be white.

"That just had an extraordinary effect on black Americans — that possibly the most handsome and maybe the most physically gifted person in the world was black and should take that position, and by extension he became a beacon of hope for oppressed people all over the world.

"And then when he refused induction into the United States Army. Whatever his reason, he stood up for the proposition that unless you have a very good reason for killing people, war is wrong. So that was at the heart of what he did."

In the 1980s, Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome, which affects speech and movement. Doctors in New York and Los Angeles said the blows he took to the head were a factor. Others disagreed, citing the possibilities of genetics and environmental factors.

Eventually, the physical grace and the lyrical speech that had defined Ali were gone.

In 1986, he married his fourth wife, Lonnie, also a Louisvillian.

As arguably the world's most famous Muslim — and American — Ali was occasionally called on to be a bridge-builder. In December 1990, he helped secure the release of 14 American hostages held in Iraq during the run-up to the Gulf War. Ali had gone to Iraq at the invitation of that nation's ruler, Saddam Hussein.

Through the 1990s, Ali's slurred speech and shuffling movements became more pronounced. When longtime friend Howard Bingham suggested that Ali light the Olympic flame for the 1996 Games in Atlanta, some organizers wondered if he would be physically able. He was able, as a tearful President Bill Clinton and a television audience of 3 billion looked on.

In anticipation of Father's Day 2004, Ali's daughter Laila said: "What's hard for me is that he's trapped inside his body. He can't do things he wants to do. He can't say things he wants to say. I feel kind of bad about that. But that's just sometimes. Most of the time I don't, because I know he doesn't feel sorry for himself."

The next year, President George W. Bush awarded Ali the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony.

"Across the world," Bush said, "billions of people know Muhammad Ali as a brave, compassionate and charming man."

By 2005, Ali was a safer, more embraceable figure than the one who denounced the Vietnam War and the racist aspects of American life in the 1960s.

"One of the very, very important things about Ali is the journey that he traveled," Hauser said. "If Muhammad Ali still was saying that white people were devils who were genetically created by an evil scientist … no, he would not be getting the presidential medal, nor would he deserve one. But the fact that he has grown and evolved in his thinking makes him a very worthy recipient."

A stolen Schwinn at 4th and York

Angered over the theft of his new bike, the 12-year-old learns to box

He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. on Jan. 17, 1942, the first of two children of Odessa and Cassius Clay. His father was a sign painter and church muralist; his mother occasionally cleaned houses. They had one other son, Rudy, who took the name Rahaman Ali in the 1960s.

Ali grew up in western Louisville in a one-story, wood-frame house at 3302 Grand Ave., where he lived from the time he was a toddler.

Cassius went to Central High School, where he reportedly was a casual student. But he had a genius — and a passion — for boxing.

That devotion had an unlikely origin: the theft of his red-and-white Schwinn bicycle. Twelve-year-old Cassius rode his new bike to the Louisville Service Club at Fourth and York streets, where children could get free hot dogs and popcorn. There, the bike was stolen.

He vowed to whip the thief if he ever found him. He did find a policeman, Joe Martin, who taught boxing at the Columbia Gym in the Service Club basement. Martin said Cassius should learn to fight before he did any whipping.

Six weeks later, the 89-pound youngster won his first fight, over Ronnie O'Keefe.

As an adolescent boxer in the mid-1950s, Cassius got his first taste of television on the "Tomorrow's Champions" program on WAVE.

Training under Martin and Fred Stoner, Cassius eventually won six Kentucky Golden Gloves titles. In 1959, he became the first Louisvillian to win a title in the Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions in Chicago. He also won the national Amateur Athletic Union light-heavyweight title in 1959 and '60.

At the Rome Olympics in 1960, the world got its first glimpse of the gregarious youngster, who was reported to be the most popular athlete at the Games. He won the light-heavyweight boxing gold medal, defeating Poland's Zbigniew Pietrzykowski in the final.

He soon signed a professional contract with 11 Louisville businessmen led by distillery executive William Faversham.

The Louisville Sponsoring Group took care of Clay's training expenses, guaranteed him a monthly income of $333 against earnings and set aside 15 percent of his winnings for a pension. It also paid him a $10,000 signing bonus. He used part of the money to buy a pink Cadillac for his parents.

Clay made his professional debut on Oct. 29, 1960, before 6,000 fans at Freedom Hall. He scored a six-round decision over Tunney Hunsaker, a West Virginia police officer. Clay's sponsors soon decided to put him in the hands of a more experienced trainer, and sent him to San Diego to train under legendary boxer Archie Moore.

"My wife is crazy about him, my kids are crazy about him, and I'm crazy about him; but he won't do what I tell him to," Moore complained.

By year's end, the sponsors sent him to 37-year-old trainer Angelo Dundee in Miami. There Ali's professional training began in earnest.

So did his religious conversion. Raised by a Baptist mother and a Methodist father, he visited a mosque in Miami in 1961 and later declared the experience "the first time in my life that I felt truly spiritual."

But he was hardly public — at first — about his attraction to Islam. Bingham told of driving him to mosques in the early 1960s, where he would make sure no one was looking, then duck in.

The establishment hardly knew what to make of Clay and his self-promoting cacophony, which reached a crescendo before his 1964 title bout against Liston in Miami.

"The calloused fight game, hit by diminishing talent, declining interest and probes of its unsavory connections, was delighted at first by the antics of this brash young descendant of a Kentucky slave," wrote Will Grimsley of The Associated Press.

"Then it became bored and finally alarmed as Clay's wild-eyed, frenzied demonstrations took on the complexion of — not just a loud-mouthed youngster but of a possibly deeply disturbed athlete on the verge of a nervous breakdown."

Ali's antics were calculated, according to Jose Torres, the boxing champion-turned-writer: "Every time an opponent walked into the ring enraged or intimidated, 'The Greatest' had done his job."

Ali turned "The Greatest" into more than a boast when he defeated Liston on Feb. 25, 1964. The taciturn former convict had seemed unbeatable before that night, but he failed to answer the bell for the seventh round. At 22, Ali was the world champion.

In response to a reporter's question the day after the fight, Ali confirmed he was a member of the Nation of Islam, saying: "I believe in Allah and in peace.…I'm not a Christian anymore.…I'm free to be whatever I want.…Followers of Allah are the sweetest people in the world. They don't tote weapons. They pray five times a day."

Casting off his "slave name," he adopted the temporary name Cassius X. On March 6 he announced that Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad had given him the name Muhammad Ali, which means "Praiseworthy One."

As an up-and-coming challenger, Clay had a commercial reason to hype himself with outrageous boasts and behavior. As the titleholder, he hardly shrank into the self-effacing mold of previous champions such as Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano. He boasted about his talent and looks. He ridiculed opponents. He spouted poetry, including his shortest:

"Me, whee!"

His influences — artistically and commercially — included Gorgeous George, the blond wrestler who made money by making enemies. Ali's spiritual guide was Elijah Muhammad, who referred to "white devils" and taught that white people were created by an evil scientist named Mr. Yacub.

A decade later, upon Elijah's death, his son Wallace became the Nation of Islam's leader, preaching a more temperate, inclusive version of humanity, which Ali embraced.

The Elvis of Boxing

'I never saw Ali as a major social or political figure. I think he was basically an entertainer.'

Ali called himself the Elvis of boxing. He ridiculed Liston before the May 1965 rematch, continuing to call him a "big ol' ugly bear," then dispatched him in the first round. He teamed with sportscaster Howard Cosell to turn boxing into theater.

After Muhammad Ali grew into the world champion, Robert Lipsyte of The New York Times said: "Ali understood television.…He was a born showman, brilliant at dramatizing himself. Whether he would have been the same phenomenon without television is hard to say. But he understood what television wanted.…Television wanted the provocateur."

Ali's second title defense, on Nov. 22, 1965, came against former champion Floyd Patterson, who had said, "Cassius Clay is disgracing himself and the Negro race." Patterson promised to retrieve the championship "for America." Ali delivered a punishing defeat that night, in part because Patterson had continued to call him "Clay."

Ali brought drama and spectacle to fights against such no-names as Chuck Wepner, whose game performance inspired Sylvester Stallone to write "Rocky." Against opponents with star quality, the spectacle was magnified.

Ali fought George Foreman, another presumably invincible big hitter, in Zaire in 1974. Ali lay on the ropes, taking blow after blow until Foreman punched himself out. Then Ali scored an eighth-round knockout, winning the world title for the second time.

Ali's most memorable fight came in his third bout against Frazier, "The Thrilla in Manila," on Oct. 1, 1975.

"It was hell the whole way," said Ed Schuyler of The Associated Press. "I've never seen two people give more, ever."

It was an epic hour. Analysts calculated that Frazier landed 440 punches. "I hit him with punches that would bring the walls of cities down," Frazier said later.

Ali, an underrated puncher, scored regularly too. Frazier's eyelids become so swollen he was practically blind. His trainer, Eddie Futch, refused to let him answer the bell for the 15th round. Ali was only slightly more able-bodied at the end.

"It was," he said, "the closest thing to death that I could feel."

More than a quarter-century later, Mark Kram's 2001 book "Ghosts of Manila" challenged the prevailing view of Ali as a social force for peace and justice. Ali was, in Kram's view, essentially a blank screen upon which people projected whatever they wished. "Ali was," he said, "no more a social figure than Frank Sinatra. … Seldom has such a public figure of more superficial depth been more wrongly perceived."

Years before, writer Wilfred Sheed had struck a similar note in Hauser's book "Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times": "I never saw Ali as a major social or political figure. I think he was basically an entertainer. Without him, I don't think society would be significantly different today. He was more a symbol than a doer. …

"I'd have to say that if Muhammad Ali never existed, life certainly would have been duller. Whatever you think of the man and his meaning, the world would have been far less interesting without him."

Hauser said in 2005: "There was a time when Ali was one of the most hated people in America. And yet Ali changed and grew and came to embrace more about what this country stood for, and this country in turn changed some and learned to embrace things in Ali. …

"If we can take that lesson and apply it to some of the worldwide struggles that we're engaged in today, there's hope. If you rewrite history and say, 'Oh, Ali was a man of principle from the very beginning, and he was wise and he was a proud black man who stood up for his people and he refused induction into the war in Vietnam,' that's a half-truth.

"It doesn't tell you that yes, he was a proud black man but he also said white people were devils and were created by an evil scientist with a big head. So the Ali legacy of how people can change and learn to embrace each other, we have to learn that."

In recent years, the Ali family often declined to offer public details about his health struggles. In 2011, Ali was briefly hospitalized in Arizona for dehydration, and again in December of 2014 for what the family said was mild pneumonia.

Yet he had continued making occasional appearances, including appearing in 2014 for photos with a terminal cancer patient and watching a relative play football. Still, he rarely spoke in public.

In his hometown of Louisville, his legacy remains highly visible. His portrait hangs downtown. A major street was named after him. And the $60 million Ali Center, built in 2005, now serves tens of thousands of visitors a year, displaying boxing memorabilia and hosting events and speakers focused on peace and responsibility.

In 2012, a Las Vegas real-estate investor and admirer of Ali bought the boxing champion's childhood home in Louisville for $70,000 and restored it. By the spring of 2016, investor Jared Weiss and George Bochetto, a one-time Pennsylvania state boxing commissioner and longtime Ali devotee, opened the home for tours.

Just before Ali’s death, as word of his last hospitalization spread and concern grew, people came to visit the home opened to the public just days earlier, according to staffers.

In a 2014 interview, Hauser said, "Louisville was always very important to him; he had a lot of affection for his hometown."

Ali is survived by Lonnie, his fourth wife, and nine children, as well as his brother, Rahaman. His father died in 1990; his mother in 1994; and his first wife, Sonji Clay-Glover, in 2005.