“The greatest of all time”, “the people’s champ” and “the Louisville champion” are some of the adjectives that are recognized worldwide to refer to the most famous and controversial fighter of all time: Muhammad Ali (1942 – 2016), or Cassius Clay , which was the name he was born with.

Some of the world’s most renowned magazines, such as The Esquire, The Time and Magazine, have exalted Muhammad Ali as the most influential sportsman and character of the late 20th century. Some still think after his death that there has not been and will not be another like him, especially because of the context in which the legend was born.

Below you can find a short biography of Muhammad Ali that goes from his early years to his triumph in the boxing world.

Biography of Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali, born as Cassius Marcellus Clay in 1942 in Louisville (Kentucky, USA), came from a middle-class black family that made a living from art , since his father painted portraits and religious representations for the privileged white classes, something that the child prodigy did not like very much because of the racial segregation that the country was experiencing in that turbulent period of the Ku Kux Klan.

Attending high school like any other kid at the time, some events frustrated Clay and marked his political-social vision in a very premature way. Once, says his mother Odessa Clay, he was denied a glass of water because he was black , a fact that angered Cassius and he returned home asking his mother for explanations.

Let us remember that in the United States there was a great controversy due to the contradiction of having fought in the Second World War for freedom, at the same time that in the country itself the races were segregated between whites and blacks , and where you could see signs in the shops like “here we do not sell to blacks”.

Boxing, an accident in his life

Muhammad Ali never thought about boxing, let alone becoming the icon he became globally. An anecdotal, circumstantial event would change his life forever: the theft of his bicycle. He began his hunt for the thief, when a local policeman intercepted him and asked him to explain. Muhammad Ali, crying, told him that he was going to “beat up the father” of the thief.

The policeman in question, Joe E. Martin, advised him to train a few strokes on the punching bag before hitting anyone, in order to vent his anger. Later, Joe would become her personal trainer, as he was her mentor and the first person to see the terrible potential Ali still possessed.

The 1960 Rome Olympics

The 1960 Rome Olympic Games event marked the beginning and professionalization of the amateur fighter. The first steps taken in the world of boxing had not shown any exceptional qualities in Ali, a fact that kept him out of the orbit of professional scouts.

However, in the Olympic Games won the gold medal against more skilled opponents on paper , beating all his opponents with relative ease. When he returned to his country in the United States, rather than returning as a hero in flight, his own people continued to treat him as a “black”, a derogatory pseudonym for African-American citizens.

Muhammad Ali against the Establishment and Segregation

In 1964 he became, against all odds, the heavyweight champion of the world against Sonny Liston, another black boxer who was invincible until the arrival of Muhammad Ali, who beat him twice.

His recent successes, his charisma and popularity, began to unsettle the American authorities , defenders of the Statu Quo imposed through segregation. Thus, during the Vietnam War, Muhammad Ali was called up for military service by arbitrarily demoting him to a lower category (on the military scale), a fact that forced him to fight in the Asian country.

Ali refused, was sentenced by the Supreme Court to serve in prison and stripped of his title as a boxer, as well as the title of world champion. Far from being offended, Cassius Clay converted to Islam (hence his reputation), used his popularity to fight for the rights of black people, attended demonstrations, university lectures and public stages to extend his struggle.

“I don’t understand why I have to go thousands of miles away from home and kill people who haven’t done anything to me while it’s my own thing to call me black,” Ali said in one of his speeches.

Boxing legend, political activist and mass idol

In the strictly sporting field, fights such as “The fight of the century” (1971) against his archenemy Joe Frazier , “Rumble in the jungle” (1974) against “Big” George Foreman or Thrilla in Manilla (1975), against Joe Frazier for the third time, where both fighters claimed to have felt the closest to death, are still recognized today as the most spectacular bouts in boxing history, and Muhammad Ali participated in all of them.

Returning to the political arena, Muhammad Ali rubbed shoulders with the most important personalities in the struggle for black rights. Among them are Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks, making the boxer another indispensable element for that cause.

Finally, a world icon was erected for all : rich, poor, sportsmen, journalists, politicians and disadvantaged young people. Lewis Hamilton, three-time Formula 1 champion, dedicated a victory to him the year of his death by shouting on the radio Ali’s famous motto “fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee!