Muhammad Ali, dead at age 74

Muhammad Ali died yesterday at age 74. He was hospitalized in the Phoenix area with respiratory problems earlier this week. Ali’s family plans to hold his funeral in the former boxer’s hometown of Louisville, Ky., where Mayor Greg Fischer ordered flags lowered to half-staff today.

Born Cassius Marcellus Clay on Jan. 17, 1942, he attended Baptist churches and began boxing at age 12, when he told policeman Joe Martin he would find and “whup” the person who stole his bicycle. Martin began training him. Clay’s six-year amateur career ended at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, where he won the light heavyweight gold medal.

Clay then turned pro, and in 1964 he defeated Sonny Liston to win the world heavyweight title, the first of three times he would claim the title in his career. Shortly after that, Clay announced his membership in the Black Muslims—the Nation of Islam—and changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

Near the peak of the Vietnam War in 1967 he defied the military draft, saying, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” and was convicted of draft evasion. Boxing officials then stripped him of his title and banned him from boxing for three and a half years. He appealed the conviction, saying he was a Muslim minister, and in 1971 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction on an 8-0 vote.

Earlier that year Ali fought Joe Frazier for the first time, in what sportswriters called “The Fight of the Century,” losing his first-ever professional bout. Ali had many other notable fights, including a brutal third bout with Frazier he won in 1975, known as the “Thrilla in Manila,” which Ali said afterward was “the closest thing to dying” he had experienced.

Now Ali is dead, apparently dying as a Muslim. The political battles of half a century ago are long gone. So are the boxing battles now 35 years in the past: Ali retired in 1981 after earning $57 million and receiving 29,000 blows to the head (his count), which led to Parkinson’s disease.

“The values of hard work, conviction, and compassion that Muhammad Ali developed while growing up in Louisville helped him become a global icon,” Mayor Fischer rightly said. And Christians, despite crucial theological differences, should remember Ali as a conscientious objector who in many ways lived by his conscience and did not give in to mainstream pressure. (See Mary Reichard’s “A lesson from Muhammad Ali in conscientious objection.”)

“What I suffered physically was worth what I’ve accomplished in life,” he said in 1984. “A man who is not courageous enough to take risks will never accomplish anything in life.”

Ali married Belinda Boyd, the second of his four wives, a month after his 1967 draft-evasion conviction, and had four children with her. He had two more children with his third wife, Veronica Porsche. Ali and his fourth wife, Lonnie Williams, adopted a son.

WORLD will have more on Ali’s life at WNG.ORG and in the next issue of the magazine.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.