Sport

Muhammad Ali was (a little bit) Irish and other facts

He was sentenced to five years in prison but never served the term

Muhammad Ali, the three-time heavyweight champion, who was one of the best known and loved sportsmen of the 20th century has died at a hospital in Phoenix, aged 74.
Sat Jun 04 2016 - 14:25

Muhammad Ali - the facts

  1. * Ali's great-grandfather Abe Grady was Irish. He emigrated from the Turnpike Road, Ennis, Co Clare, to the US in the 1860s. Ali returned to his ancestral home in 2009 and was later made honorary freeman of Ennis . Later a controversy erupted when Ennis Town Council told a historian, who claimed Abe Grady never set foot in Ireland, "to put up or shut up".
  2. * Ali had a show-time personality, dazzling footwork and great hand speed that combined to make him a champion like his sport had never seen. His career record was 56 victories, 37 of them by knockout, and five losses. He held the world championship an unprecedented three different times.
  3. * Fighting under his given name of Cassius Clay, he won a gold medal in the light heavyweight competition at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. In a 1975 autobiography he said he threw the medal into a river one night after being refused service in a Louisville restaurant and being harassed by a gang of whites. Two biographers, however, said Ali actually lost the medal unintentionally.
  4. * His first professional fight was a six-round decision in 1960 over Tunney Hunsaker, whose day job was police chief of Fayetteville, West Virginia. Ali and Hunsaker became friends and Ali wrote in an autobiography that one of the hardest body blows he ever received came from Hunsaker.
  5. * After Malcolm X helped Ali become a member of the Nation of Islam, he dropped his given name in favor of Cassius X. Malcolm X later split from the church in a dispute but the fighter stayed on and changed his name to Muhammad Ali, which Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad said was his "true name."
  6. * Claiming conscientious objector status, Ali refused to be inducted into the US Army in 1967. He was sentenced to five years in prison, lost his title and could not get a fight at a time when he was in his athletic prime. He never went to prison while his case was under appeal and in 1971 the US Supreme Court overturned the conviction.
  7. * In 1984 Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome that apparently was linked to his career. It left him slow, shaky and unable to speak much above a whisper but close associates said he never lost his sense of humor or zeal for his faith.
  8. * Ali, named the top sportsman of the 20th century by Sports Illustrated magazine, met world leaders such as Queen Elizabeth, Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein. He was given a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.
  9. * The US Army measured Ali's IQ at 78. In his autobiography he said, "I only said I was the greatest, not the smartest."

Ali in numbers

  • 61 — Fights Ali was involved in.
  • 56 — Ali called himself 'The Greatest' and he had the wins to back that claim up.
  • 37 — Wins by knockout.
  • 5 — Defeats Ali suffered.
  • 31 — His winning streak before he was beaten for the first time by Joe Frazier in 'The Fight of the Century'.
  • 14 — Rounds Ali and Frazier went toe-to-toe in their third and final fight, the 'Thrilla in Manila'.
  • 21 — How long his career spanned in years.
  • 3 — World heavyweight title victories.