He was first directed toward boxing by Louisville police officer and boxing coach Joe E. Martin, who encountered the 12-year-old fuming over a thief taking his bicycle. He told the officer he was going to "whup" the thief. The officer told him he had better learn how to box first. For the last four years of Clay's amateur career he was trained by boxing cutman Chuck Bodak.
Clay made his amateur boxing debut in 1954.He won six Kentucky Golden Gloves titles, two national Golden Gloves titles, an Amateur Athletic Union national itle, and the Light Heavyweight gold medal in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. Clay's amateur record was 100 wins with five losses. Ali claimed in his 1975 autobiography that shortly after his return from the Rome Olympics he threw his gold medal into the Ohio River after he and a friend were refused service at a "whites-only" restaurant and fought with a white gang. The story has since been disputed and several of Ali's friends, including Bundini Brown and photographer Howard Bingham, have denied it. Brown told Sports Illustrated writer Mark Kram, "Honkies sure bought into that one!" Thomas Hauser's biography of Ali stated that Ali was refused service at the diner but that he lost his medal a year after he won it.Ali received a replacement medal at a basketball intermission during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where he lit the torch to start the games.
Ali was married four times and had seven daughters and two sons. Ali met his first wife, cocktail waitress Sonji Roi, approximately one month before they married on August 14, 1964. Roi's objections to certain Muslim customs in regard to dress for women contributed to the breakup of their marriage. They divorced on January 10, 1966.
On August 17, 1967, Ali married Belinda Boyd. After the wedding, she, like Ali, converted to Islam. She changed her name to Khalilah Ali, though she was still called Belinda by old friends and family. They had four children: Maryum (born 1968), twins Jamillah and Rasheda (born 1970), and Muhammad Ali, Jr. (born 1972).Maryum has a career as an author and rapper.
In 1975, Ali began an affair with Veronica Porsche, an actress and model. By the summer of 1977, his second marriage was over and he had married Porsche. At the time of their marriage, they had a baby girl, Hana, and Veronica was pregnant with their second child. Their second daughter, Laila Ali, was born in December 1977. By 1986, Ali and Porsche were divorced.
Laila became a boxer in 1999,despite her father's earlier comments against female boxing in 1978: "Women are not made to be hit in the breast, and face like that... the body's not made to be punched right here [patting his chest]. Get hit in the breast... hard... and all that."
On November 19, 1986, Ali married Yolanda ("Lonnie") Williams. They had been friends since 1964 in Louisville. They have one son, Asaad Amin, whom they adopted when Amin was five months old.
Ali was a resident of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, in the early 1970s. He had two other daughters, Miya and Khaliah, from extramarital relationships.
Ali most recently lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, with Lonnie.In January 2007 it was reported that they had put their home in Berrien Springs, up for sale and had purchased a home in eastern Jefferson County, Kentucky, for $1,875,000. Lonnie converted to Islam from Catholicism in her late twenties.
Through Hana, Ali's son-in-law is mixed martial artist Kevin Casey. Coincidentally, Ali died the night before Casey fought in his hometown of Inglewood, California at UFC 199.
Religion and beliefs
Affiliation with the Nation of Islam
Ali said that he first heard of the Nation of Islam (NOI) when he was fighting in the Golden Gloves tournament in Chicago in 1959, and attended his first NOI meeting in 1961. He continued to attend meetings, although keeping his involvement hidden from the public. In 1962, Clay met Malcolm X, who soon became his spiritual and political mentor, and by the time of the first Liston fight NOI members, including Malcolm X, were visible in his entourage. This led to a story in The Miami Herald just before the fight disclosing that Clay had joined the Nation, which nearly caused the bout to be canceled.
Ali at an address by Elijah Muhammad
In fact, Clay was initially refused entry to the Nation of Islam (often called the Black Muslims at the time) due to his boxing career. However, after he won the championship from Liston in 1964, the Nation of Islam was more receptive and agreed to recruit him as a member. Shortly afterwards, Elijah Muhammad recorded a statement that Clay would be renamed Muhammad (one who is worthy of praise) Ali (Ali is the most important figure after Muhammad in Shia view & fourth rightly guided caliph in Sunni view).
Only a few journalists (most notably Howard Cosell) accepted the new name at that time. Ali later announced: "Cassius Clay is my slave name." Ali's friendship with Malcolm X ended as Malcolm split with the NOI a couple of weeks after Ali joined, and Ali remained with the Nation.Ali later said that turning his back on Malcolm was one of the mistakes he regretted most in his life.
Malcolm X is holding a camera and taking a picture of Ali, who is sitting at a luncheonette counter
Malcolm X photographs Ali in February 1964, after his first defeat of Sonny Liston to become world heavyweight champion.
Aligning himself with the Nation of Islam, its leader Elijah Muhammad, and a narrative that labeled the white race as the perpetrator of genocide against African Americans made Ali a target of public condemnation. The NOI was widely viewed by whites and even some African Americans as a black separatist "hate religion" with a propensity toward violence; Ali had few qualms about using his influential voice to speak NOI doctrine.In a press conference articulating his opposition to the Vietnam War, Ali stated, "my enemy is the white people, not the Vietcong".In relation to integration, he said: "We who follow the teachings of Elijah Muhammad don't want to be forced to integrate. Integration is wrong. We don't want to live with the white man; that's all."And in relation to inter-racial marriage: "No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters." Indeed, Ali's religious beliefs at the time included the notion that the white man was "the devil" and that white people were not "righteous".
Writer Jerry Izenberg once noted that, "the Nation became Ali's family and Elijah Muhammad became his father. But there is an irony to the fact that while the Nation branded white people as devils, Ali had more white colleagues than most African American people did at that time in America, and continued to have them throughout his career."
Later beliefs
Ali converted from the Nation of Islam sect to mainstream Sunni Islam in 1975. In a 2004 autobiography, written with daughter Hana Yasmeen Ali, he attributes his conversion to the shift toward Islam made by Warith Deen Muhammad after he gained control of the Nation of Islam upon the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975. Later in his life, he embraced the spiritual teachings of Universal Sufism founder Inayat Khan.
HEALTH ISSUES AND DEATH
Muhammad Ali had been diagnosed of Parkinson's disease.In February 2013, Ali's brother, Rahman Ali, said Muhammad could no longer speak and could be dead within days. Ali's daughter, May May Ali, responded to the rumors, stating that she had talked to him on the phone the morning of February 3 and he was fine.
On December 20, 2014, Ali was hospitalized for a mild case of pneumonia. Ali was once again hospitalized on January 15, 2015, for a urinary tract infection after being found unresponsive at a guest house in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was released the next day.
Ali was hospitalized in Scottsdale again on June 2, 2016, with a respiratory illness. His condition was initially described as "fair". The following day, his condition worsened, and he was placed on life support. Late on June 3, he died at the age of 74.A family spokesman said on June 4 that he had died of septic shock.
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