Muhammad Ali: The Life Story Behind the Greatest

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr on 17 January 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, and he became the most famous athlete who ever lived. He won the heavyweight championship of the world three times, he fought in the two most famous boxing matches of the twentieth century, and he became a symbol of courage, faith and defiance that reached far beyond sport. He called himself The Greatest before anyone else did, and then he spent twenty years proving it, in the ring and outside it. He refused to fight in Vietnam, he lost his titles and his best years for his beliefs, and he came back to win them again. He was a poet, a showman, a political figure and a boxer, and he did all of it in public, at full volume, for the whole world to watch. His story begins, fittingly, with a theft.

What makes Ali different from every other boxer is that his greatness cannot be measured in wins alone. His record was fifty-six wins and five defeats, with thirty-seven knockouts, and those numbers are impressive, but they do not explain why his funeral in Louisville in 2016 was watched around the world, or why people who never saw a boxing match know his name. Ali mattered because he fought for things that had nothing to do with belts: the right to be called by his own name, the right to refuse a war he did not believe in, and the right of a Black man in segregated America to speak as loudly as he wanted. He was the first athlete to understand that fame is a platform, and he used it without apology, even when it cost him everything.

A Stolen Bicycle in Segregated Louisville

Louisville in the 1940s and 1950s was a segregated city in the American South, and the Clay family lived in a modest house in a Black neighbourhood. His father, Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr, painted church murals and signs, and his mother, Odessa, cleaned houses for white families. The family was middle-class by the standards of Black Louisville, and the boys, Cassius and his younger brother Rahman, who was born Rudolph, were raised with discipline and with a clear sense of their own worth. Cassius was a big, handsome child, afraid of very little, and he loved to run, to swim and to show off. He was also, from an early age, aware of the colour line: Black people in Louisville could not eat in the same restaurants as white people, could not drink from the same fountains, and could not sit where they wanted on buses.

When he was twelve, his new bicycle was stolen outside the Louisville Home Show, and the crying boy reported the theft to a policeman named Joe Martin, who also ran a boxing gym in the basement of the Columbia Gym. Martin told him that if he wanted to get the thief, he had better learn to fight first, and the boy took him at his word. He started training at Martin’s gym the next day, and within weeks he was obsessed. He trained before school, after school, and at weekends, and he discovered that he had two gifts that no coach could teach: speed and a refusal to be hit. He was a heavyweight who moved like a middleweight, dancing on his toes, flicking out a jab that was faster than most men’s punches, and pulling his head back just far enough to make his opponents miss. Martin and his assistant, Fred Stoner, taught him the basics, and by the time he was fourteen he was winning local tournaments.

The stolen bicycle is the most famous origin story in boxing, and it matters because it shows how accidental greatness can be. If the bicycle had not been stolen, if Joe Martin had not been on duty that day, if the gym had been closed, the boy might have grown up to paint signs like his father. Instead he found a place where his speed, his showmanship and his anger at the world around him all had a use, and he never left it. He won his first amateur bouts, he lost a few, he learned, and by 1956 he had won his first Golden Gloves title in Kentucky. The boy from Louisville was on his way.

Golden Gloves, Rome, and the Olympic Gold

Ali’s amateur career was extraordinary. He won one hundred fights and lost only five, and he won the national Golden Gloves tournament in 1959 and again in 1960, along with the Amateur Athletic Union title. He was tall, fast and already famous for talking: he told reporters that he was going to win the Olympics, that he was going to turn professional, and that he was going to be the heavyweight champion of the world, and he said it all with a grin that made it impossible to tell whether he was joking. He was not joking. In September 1960, at eighteen, he travelled to Rome for the Olympic Games, where he fought in the light-heavyweight division and won the gold medal, beating the Polish champion Zbigniew Pietrzykowski in the final. He came home to Louisville a hero, and the city gave him a parade.

The homecoming had a bitter edge that Ali never forgot. He later wrote in his autobiography that he threw his Olympic medal into the Ohio River after being refused service in a Louisville restaurant because he was Black, an account that has been questioned by historians but that Ali himself repeated for the rest of his life. Whether or not the medal went into the river — the International Olympic Committee gave him a replacement in 1996 — the story captures a truth about his life: he had won the highest honour in amateur sport, and his own country still would not serve him a meal. The anger that produced would drive the next twenty years of his career, and it would make him far more than a boxer. He turned professional in October 1960, beating Tunney Hunsaker on points in his first paid fight, and he signed with a group of Louisville businessmen who managed his early career. He was still Cassius Clay then, a polite young man who said “sir” and “ma’am” to reporters, and nobody yet knew what he would become.

His early professional fights were showcases for his speed. He beat experienced men easily, he danced, he talked during fights, he predicted the round in which he would win, and he was usually right. He knocked out Sonny Banks, he beat Doug Jones in a close fight at Madison Square Garden in 1963, and he knocked out Henry Cooper in London in June 1963, getting up from a knockdown in the fourth round to stop the Englishman in the fifth. By the end of 1963 he had won nineteen professional fights, and he was ready for the champion, a man that almost everyone in boxing feared.

Sonny Liston and the Night the World Was Shocked

Sonny Liston was the most feared heavyweight of his era: a huge, powerful ex-convict with a criminal record, a punch that broke bones, and a reputation for destroying opponents. When Clay challenged him for the title on 25 February 1964 in Miami Beach, the odds were seven to one against the challenger, and many people thought Clay would be seriously hurt. Clay spent the weeks before the fight taunting Liston, calling him a big ugly bear, predicting that he would beat him, and driving the champion to fury. On the night, he did something nobody expected: he moved. He danced around Liston, jabbed him, cut him, and made the most dangerous man in boxing look slow and old. After six rounds, Liston, with a injured shoulder and his face swelling, refused to come out for the seventh, and Cassius Clay was the heavyweight champion of the world at twenty-two.

The morning after the fight, Clay announced that he had converted to Islam and that he no longer wanted to be called by his slave name. He first took the name Cassius X, and then the name Muhammad Ali, given to him by Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. The announcement shocked America. Newspapers refused to use the new name, boxing officials threatened to strip him, and white audiences who had cheered the brash young Clay were suddenly confronted with a Black Muslim who would not apologise for his faith. Ali did not care. He had won the title, and he was going to be called what he chose to be called, and anyone who refused would have to deal with him in the ring.

He defended the title against Liston in a rematch in Lewiston, Maine, in May 1965, knocking Liston down in the first round with a short, sharp right hand that many people in the arena did not even see. The punch became known as the anchor punch, or the phantom punch, and arguments about whether Liston took a dive have never stopped. Ali did not care about the argument either. He had beaten the most feared man in boxing twice, and he was the champion, and the name on the posters was now Muhammad Ali.

What’s My Name, Vietnam, and the Price of Principle

Ali’s next defences showed a fighter at the height of his powers. He beat Floyd Patterson in 1965, stopping the former champion in twelve rounds, and he beat Ernie Terrell in February 1967 in a fight that revealed the cruelty that Ali could bring into the ring. Terrell had refused to call him Muhammad Ali, insisting on using the name Clay, and Ali punished him for it for fifteen rounds, hitting him, taunting him, and asking him again and again, “What’s my name?” He won the fight easily, but the performance disturbed even his admirers: it was not a contest but a lesson, and Ali had taught it with his fists.

Then came the decision that defined his life. In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Ali was called up for military service. He refused to be inducted, on religious grounds, saying the famous words, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.” He was arrested, he was stripped of his boxing licence and his titles, and he was convicted of draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison, a sentence he appealed while remaining free. For three and a half years, from 1967 to 1970, he could not box professionally in America. He was twenty-five years old, in the prime of his athletic life, and he lost the years when a heavyweight is at his fastest, his strongest and his sharpest. He made a living by speaking at colleges, by appearing on television, and by fighting for his case in the courts, and he became a hero to the anti-war movement and to young Black Americans who saw in him a man who would not be bought.

The Supreme Court finally ruled in his favour in June 1971, overturning his conviction by a unanimous vote, but the years were gone, and they were never coming back. Ali lost the best years of his career for a principle, and he never once said he regretted it. When people asked him, years later, whether he would do it again, he said yes, without hesitation. It is the decision that separates him from every other athlete of his era: he gave up the thing he loved most for the thing he believed in most, and he paid the price in full, in public, without complaint.

The Fight of the Century and the Road Back

When Ali returned to boxing in 1970, the heavyweight division had a new champion: Joe Frazier, a relentless, hard-punching fighter from Philadelphia who had won the title in Ali’s absence. The two men could not have been more different. Frazier was quiet, working-class, and fought with a bobbing, weaving style that brought him inside and wore opponents down. Ali was loud, fast, and fought from the outside, dancing and jabbing. Their first fight, on 8 March 1971 at Madison Square Garden, was called the Fight of the Century, and it lived up to the name. Both men were undefeated, the whole world watched, and the fight went the full fifteen rounds. Frazier knocked Ali down in the fifteenth round with a left hook, and won the decision. It was Ali’s first defeat, and it was also the first time he had been beaten, humbled, and forced to rebuild.

The loss did not break him. He beat Jerry Quarry and Jimmy Ellis, he lost to Ken Norton in March 1973, suffering a broken jaw in the fight, and then beat Norton in a rematch six months later. He beat Frazier in a rematch in January 1974, a dull, wrestling-heavy fight that he won on points, and that victory earned him a shot at the new champion, George Foreman. Foreman was the most destructive puncher in boxing history, a man who had knocked out Frazier in two rounds and Norton in two rounds, and almost nobody gave Ali a chance. The fight was staged in Kinshasa, in Zaire, in October 1974, and it became the most famous boxing match ever held, the Rumble in the Jungle.

Ali’s plan for Foreman was a masterpiece of boxing intelligence. He knew he could not dance for fifteen rounds at thirty-two, and he knew he could not trade punches with a man that strong. So he did the opposite of what everyone expected: he went to the ropes, covered up, and let Foreman punch himself out. The tactic became known as the rope-a-dope, and for seven rounds Foreman threw everything he had at Ali’s arms and body, while Ali whispered to him, asking if that was all he had. In the eighth round, with Foreman exhausted, Ali came off the ropes and knocked him down with a combination of punches, and the champion was counted out. Ali was the heavyweight champion of the world again, at thirty-two, after losing his best years, and the crowd in Kinshasa chanted his name in a language he did not speak but understood perfectly.

The Thrilla in Manila and the Third Crown

The third fight with Frazier, on 1 October 1975 in Manila in the Philippines, was the hardest fight of Ali’s life, and many people believe it was the hardest fight any heavyweight ever fought. The two men hated each other by then, and the build-up was bitter, with Ali taunting Frazier cruelly. The fight itself was fought in terrible heat, and for fourteen rounds they hit each other with a ferocity that shocked the watching world. Ali won when Frazier’s trainer, Eddie Futch, refused to let his man come out for the fifteenth round, because Frazier’s eyes were swollen shut. Ali collapsed in his corner afterwards, and he later said that the fight was the closest thing to dying that he had ever known. He had beaten his greatest rival, he had kept his title, and he had paid for it with a part of himself that never came back.

Ali defended his title several more times, against fighters who were younger and fresher, and the signs of decline were visible: his legs were slower, his reflexes were duller, and he was taking punches he would once have slipped. In February 1978 he lost the title to Leon Spinks, a twenty-four-year-old with only seven professional fights, in one of the biggest upsets in boxing history. Seven months later, in September 1978, he beat Spinks in a rematch in New Orleans, becoming the first man to win the heavyweight championship three times. He retired in 1979, and the retirement should have been the end. It was not.

He came back in 1980 to fight Larry Holmes, his former sparring partner, for the title, and the fight was a tragedy. Holmes, who was younger, stronger and in his prime, beat Ali for ten rounds before Ali’s corner stopped it, and the watching world saw a legend being hurt by a man who did not want to hurt him. Ali fought once more, losing to Trevor Berbick in December 1981, and then retired for good, with a record of fifty-six wins and five defeats. The comeback had damaged him, and it had damaged his legacy, and he knew it. He had stayed too long, as great fighters often do, because the ring was the only place he had ever felt fully alive.

Parkinson’s, the Olympic Flame, and the Long Goodbye

In 1984, three years after his last fight, Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s syndrome, a condition that slowed his speech, stiffened his body, and gradually took away the voice that had been his greatest weapon. Doctors believed the condition was linked to the thousands of punches he had taken over twenty-one years in the ring, and the diagnosis cast a shadow over his later life. He did not hide from it. He appeared in public, he spoke slowly and with difficulty, and he let the world see what boxing had done to him, without self-pity and without complaint. He became an ambassador for Parkinson’s research, he raised money, and he used his fame to help people who suffered from the same condition.

The most moving moment of his later life came at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, when he appeared at the opening ceremony, his hands shaking, to light the Olympic flame. The stadium fell silent, and then it erupted, and millions of people watching on television saw a man who could barely hold the torch carrying the symbol of the Games. It was a moment of extraordinary dignity, and it completed a circle that had begun in Rome thirty-six years earlier: the young man who had won the gold medal was now the old man who lit the flame, and the whole world was watching both. In 2005, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in America, and the citation called him a champion of freedom and a symbol of hope.

Ali died on 3 June 2016 in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the age of seventy-four, after a long illness. His funeral in Louisville was a public event, with thousands of people lining the streets, and eulogies from the former President Bill Clinton, the comedian Billy Crystal, and his own family. He was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, in the city where his bicycle had been stolen seventy-four years earlier, and the world mourned a man who had been, for half a century, the most famous person on earth.

What Ali Leaves Behind

Ali’s legacy is not a record but a standard. He showed that an athlete could be a political figure, that a Black man in America could speak without asking permission, and that a champion could lose everything for a principle and still come back to win. He changed boxing, because he made it a global spectacle, and he changed sport, because he showed that fame could be used for something larger than endorsements. He also changed how athletes talk: the poetry, the predictions, the trash talk, the showmanship that every fighter uses now was invented by Ali, and it has never been done better.

He was not a perfect man. He was cruel to Frazier, he was unfaithful to his wives, he stayed in the ring too long, and he made mistakes that hurt people he loved. He had four wives and nine children, including Laila Ali, who became a boxer herself, and his family life was complicated and sometimes painful. But the imperfections are part of the story, because they make the courage more real: a perfect man who refused the draft would be a statue, and Ali was a human being who did it anyway, knowing what it would cost him, and who lived with the consequences for the rest of his life. He was The Greatest, and he knew it, and he told the world, and the world, eventually, agreed.

My Take:

When I think about Muhammad Ali, I think about a twelve-year-old boy whose bicycle was stolen, because that small, ordinary moment started the most extraordinary life in sport. He could have walked away, yet he walked into a gym, and that gym led to an Olympic gold, to three world titles, and to a stand against a war that cost him everything. What I admire most is not the boxing, brilliant as it was, but the refusal, because Ali gave up his titles, his money and his prime years for a belief, and then came back and won it all again. That is what makes him The Greatest, and not just a great boxer, but a great human being.

The lesson I take from Ali is that principles have a price, because he lost his titles and three years of his prime for refusing to fight in Vietnam, yet he never regretted it. There is a lesson here about handling the days when nothing works, because every long career has them, and the difference between quitting and continuing is often just one more morning of trying. If there is one thing to copy from this life, it is the habit of preparation, because the great performances that look effortless are almost always the most rehearsed. The story reminds me that support matters as much as skill, because nobody reaches the top alone, and the people who carried the bags, kept the home and believed early deserve a share of the credit. Looking at this career from a distance, the pattern is clear: the early years were about learning, the middle years were about proving, and the later years were about giving something back to the game or the art that made it all possible. The story also shows that talent without humility rarely lasts, because the moment a person believes they have nothing left to learn, the game or the audience moves on without them. There is something reassuring about a career that was not perfect, because perfection is a myth, and a real life with mistakes in it is far more useful to the rest of us. I keep thinking about the cost of fame in this life, because the same attention that brings love also brings judgement, and learning to live with both is a skill nobody is born with. I think this life also teaches us about grace under pressure, because the cameras are always on, and the way a person behaves on the worst day often says more than the way they behave on the best day. The legacy of this life will probably be argued about for years, and that is fine, because the argument itself shows how much the work mattered to people. I admire the way the best years of this career were not just about winning, because winning alone is empty, and the joy seemed to come from playing the game well and sharing it with others. There is a quiet kind of courage in starting over after a setback, and this life has that courage in it more than once, which is why it still speaks to people today.

I also learn from him that a stolen bicycle can start a legend, because a twelve-year-old boy who reported a theft was told to learn to fight, and that advice changed history. What I would tell a young reader is to look past the trophies and study the routines, because the trophies are the result, while the routines are the part anyone can actually copy. I admire the way this person treated rivals, because respect for an opponent is often the clearest sign of confidence, and the greatest rivalries in this story made both sides better. The money and the headlines can distract from the real achievement, which is simply this: a person kept doing difficult work, in public, for many years, and kept finding ways to do it better. I think the deepest lesson is about identity, because when the cheering stops, a person still needs to know who they are without the title, the shirt or the stage. I notice how often the turning points in this life came from other people: a coach who believed, a parent who sacrificed, a friend who told the truth when flattery would have been easier. The part of this story I would underline for parents is the role of encouragement without pressure, because the young star in this tale flourished when support came with freedom, not with fear. This life shows that a dream can be both bigger than the person and still within reach, because the gap between the two is closed one small step at a time. What I hope readers remember is not a single number or a single date, but the feeling of this life: that hard work, honestly done, can still take a person further than anyone expected. I think this story earns its place because it is not only about one person, because it also tells us something about the country, the era and the sport or art that shaped them. I think we often forget how young these stars were when the pressure began, because a teenager carrying the hopes of a nation is still a teenager, with the same doubts and the same need for kindness as anyone else. The older I look at this story, the more I see the role of family and close friends, because fame is loud, and a steady private life is what keeps a person standing.

His rope-a-dope in Zaire teaches me that intelligence beats power, because he let Foreman tire himself out and then won with patience and timing. I notice that the most loved moments in this career were often the shared ones, because a victory celebrated with a team, a family or a crowd lasts longer in memory than a victory celebrated alone. I would also point to the courage it took to change, because changing a style, a team or a whole direction in front of millions of watching eyes is far harder than it looks. What makes this story worth reading again is that it refuses to be only one thing, because it holds triumph and trouble side by side, and that is how real lives actually feel. What stays with me about this life is not the list of honours, because honours fade from memory, but the way a person kept showing up when the work was hard and the applause was far away. There is something honest about a career that includes failure, because it reminds the rest of us that a bad day, a lost final or a poor season does not have to define a whole life. I find myself thinking about the young people reading this story, because the message for them is simple: start where you are, use what you have, and keep going long enough for luck to find you. There is a practical lesson here about health and rest, because the body and the mind both have limits, and the stars who respect those limits usually last the longest. If you read this story as a map rather than a museum piece, you can see the choices that mattered: which coach to trust, which risk to take, which offer to refuse, and when to rest. The most interesting question this story leaves behind is not what was won, but what comes next, because a great career creates a platform, and what a person does with that platform matters just as much. I believe the story also warns us about believing our own headlines, because headlines are written in a hurry, and a wise person reads them lightly and keeps working. There is a generosity in this career that is easy to miss, because giving time, money or encouragement to others rarely makes the headlines, yet it shapes how a person is remembered.

The Olympic flame in Atlanta reminds me that courage can be quiet, because Ali’s shaking hands held the torch steady, and the world wept at the sight. The part of this story that feels most human is the beginning, when nobody knew the name and the dream looked far too big for the life around it. I think the real lesson here is about patience, because the world loves an overnight success story, yet almost every overnight success took years of quiet mornings to build. What strikes me most is the patience in this story, because the world wanted everything fast, and this person kept choosing the slower, steadier road instead. What I take away most is that consistency beats intensity, because a person who shows up every day for years will usually outlast the person who burns bright for one season. What I notice most is how much this person had to adapt, because the game, the industry and the audience all changed, and standing still would have meant falling behind. There is a final lesson about letting go, because every career ends, and the people who plan for that ending, and who find new purpose after it, tend to enjoy the years that follow. I keep returning to the small moments in this story, because the grand finals are easy to remember, while the quiet practice sessions and the kind words are the parts that actually built the career. I keep coming back to the idea of discipline, because talent opens the door, but discipline is what keeps a person in the room year after year. I think the legacy here is not only about records, because records are made to be broken, but about the standard that was set for everyone who came after. One of the most hopeful parts of this story is that the best chapter did not always come first, because some of the finest work arrived after the setbacks, when the person knew themselves better. I believe the most useful lesson is about handling pressure, because the pressure never really goes away, and the people who last learn to carry it without letting it crush them.

Finally, his life shows me that being The Greatest is not only about winning fights, but about standing up for what you believe, even when it costs you everything. The final thought I keep returning to is balance, because a great career is only part of a good life, and the people who protect their health, their family and their peace tend to enjoy the journey far more. I find the late chapters of this life especially moving, because they show a person learning to enjoy the work again after years of carrying it like a burden. One of the most hopeful parts of this story is that the best chapter did not always come first, because some of the finest work arrived after the setbacks, when the person knew themselves better. There is something reassuring about a career that was not perfect, because perfection is a myth, and a real life with mistakes in it is far more useful to the rest of us. I think this life also teaches us about grace under pressure, because the cameras are always on, and the way a person behaves on the worst day often says more than the way they behave on the best day. There is something honest about a career that includes failure, because it reminds the rest of us that a bad day, a lost final or a poor season does not have to define a whole life. The story also shows that talent without humility rarely lasts, because the moment a person believes they have nothing left to learn, the game or the audience moves on without them. The part of this story I would underline for parents is the role of encouragement without pressure, because the young star in this tale flourished when support came with freedom, not with fear. What I would tell a young reader is to look past the trophies and study the routines, because the trophies are the result, while the routines are the part anyone can actually copy. I find the late chapters of this life especially moving, because they show a person learning to enjoy the work again after years of carrying it like a burden. There is a quiet kind of courage in starting over after a setback, and this life has that courage in it more than once, which is why it still speaks to people today.

What I take away most is that consistency beats intensity, because a person who shows up every day for years will usually outlast the person who burns bright for one season. This life shows that a dream can be both bigger than the person and still within reach, because the gap between the two is closed one small step at a time. What stays with me about this life is not the list of honours, because honours fade from memory, but the way a person kept showing up when the work was hard and the applause was far away. There is a generosity in this career that is easy to miss, because giving time, money or encouragement to others rarely makes the headlines, yet it shapes how a person is remembered. What makes this story worth reading again is that it refuses to be only one thing, because it holds triumph and trouble side by side, and that is how real lives actually feel. The money and the headlines can distract from the real achievement, which is simply this: a person kept doing difficult work, in public, for many years, and kept finding ways to do it better. The final thought I keep returning to is balance, because a great career is only part of a good life, and the people who protect their health, their family and their peace tend to enjoy the journey far more. I keep coming back to the idea of discipline, because talent opens the door, but discipline is what keeps a person in the room year after year. I find myself thinking about the young people reading this story, because the message for them is simple: start where you are, use what you have, and keep going long enough for luck to find you. I notice that the most loved moments in this career were often the shared ones, because a victory celebrated with a team, a family or a crowd lasts longer in memory than a victory celebrated alone. There is a practical lesson here about health and rest, because the body and the mind both have limits, and the stars who respect those limits usually last the longest. There is a lesson here about handling the days when nothing works, because every long career has them, and the difference between quitting and continuing is often just one more morning of trying. I think the legacy here is not only about records, because records are made to be broken, but about the standard that was set for everyone who came after. What strikes me most is the patience in this story, because the world wanted everything fast, and this person kept choosing the slower, steadier road instead. I think we often forget how young these stars were when the pressure began, because a teenager carrying the hopes of a nation is still a teenager, with the same doubts and the same need for kindness as anyone else. I believe the story also warns us about believing our own headlines, because headlines are written in a hurry, and a wise person reads them lightly and keeps working.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was Muhammad Ali born?

Muhammad Ali was born as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr on 17 January 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky.

Why did Muhammad Ali refuse to fight in Vietnam?

He refused induction into the US Army in 1967, citing his religious beliefs, and he was stripped of his titles and boxing licences.

What was the Rumble in the Jungle?

It was Ali’s 1974 fight against George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire, where Ali won by knockout in the eighth round using the rope-a-dope tactic.

How many times did Muhammad Ali win the heavyweight title?

He won the heavyweight title three times, the first boxer to do so.

When did Muhammad Ali die?

He died on 3 June 2016, at the age of seventy-four, from respiratory complications related to Parkinson’s disease.