Boxing legend Muhammad Ali dies at 74. #RIP

Late Friday night, the world lost a legend.

The great Muhammad Ali, who suffered for years from Parkinson’s disease, died at the age of 74 after being hospitalized in Phoenix with respiratory problems.
As news broke of Ali’s passing, the tributes began to pour in over social media reflecting on the life and impact of the LEGEND.

Muhammad Ali was, at his peak, arguably the most famous man on the planet.

His prodigious boxing talent was matched only by a towering self-belief.

"I am the greatest," he said, and who could doubt a man who won the World Heavyweight Championship three times.

His outspoken support for civil rights endeared him to millions of people across the world.

He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay in Louisville, Kentucky, on 17 January 1942, the son of a sign painter. He was named after a prominent 19th Century abolitionist.

When he was 12, he reported his bicycle had been stolen and told a police officer he was going to "whup" the culprit.

The officer, Joe Martin, trained young fighters at a local gym and suggested the youngster learn to box before he challenged the thief.

Clay quickly took to the ring, making his competitive debut in 1954 in a three-minute amateur bout.

"He stood out because he had more determination than most boys," Martin later recalled. "He was easily the hardest worker of any kid I ever taught."

Over the following five years, his amateur career flourished and he won a number of awards including the Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions in 1959.

In 1960 he was selected in the US team for the Rome Olympics. At first he refused to go because of his fear of flying. Eventually, according to Joe Martin's son, he bought a second-hand parachute and wore it on the flight.

It was worth all the effort. On 5 September 1960, he beat Poland's Zbigniew Pietrzykowski to become the Olympic light-heavyweight champion.

He received a hero's welcome when the team returned to New York but the reality of the segregated US society hit home when he got back to Kentucky and was refused a table in a restaurant.

Ali claimed in his 1975 autobiography that he threw away his Olympic medal in disgust but it was later revealed that he lost it a year after his return from Rome.

Outrageous

Though only 18, he joined boxing's paid ranks and began his professional career later the same year with a six-round points win over Tunney Hunsaker, a police chief from West Virginia.

"Clay was as fast as lightning," Hunsaker said after the bout. "I tried every trick I knew to throw him off balance but he was just too good."

Ali also took on Angelo Dundee, the trainer who would contribute so much to his boxing success.

A steady succession of victories, reinforced by outrageous self-advertising, brought him fame, if not universal popularity.

Clay's extraordinary manner in the ring involved dancing around his opponents like a lightweight.

He taunted them, delighting crowds with his showboating, shuffling feet and lightning reflexes.

He offered further hostages to fortune by predicting not merely his opponents' defeat, but when precisely he would dispose of them. "They must fall the round I call," he boasted.

In London in 1963, he was floored in the fourth round by British champion Henry Cooper, but fulfilled his pre-fight prediction when cuts to Cooper's eye forced his retirement in the next round.

Nation of Islam

The following year Clay challenged the formidable world champion Sonny Liston, whom he referred to as "that ugly old bear".

Clay was given no chance by the boxing press but ran rings round his older opponent and forced Liston to quit on his stool at the end of the sixth round.

"I shook up the world," a near-hysterical Clay declared after the fight.

Away from the ring, Clay was a fierce opponent of the racism that blighted large areas of the United States in the 1960s.