There were so many things that Ali did, both in and out of the ring, that made him a very popular and polarizing figure. Born Cassius Marcellus Clay on Jan. 17, 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, to middle-class parents, Ali started boxing when he was 12, winning Golden Gloves titles before heading to the 1960 Olympics in Rome, where he won a gold medal as a light heavyweight. He turned professional shortly afterward, supported at first by Louisville business owners who guaranteed him an unprecedented 50-50 split in earnings. His knack for talking up his own talents — often in verse — earned him the dismissive nickname "the Louisville Lip," but he backed up his talk with action, relocating to Miami to work with top trainer Angelo Dundee and build a case for getting a shot at the heavyweight title. After changing his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, his career really took off. He had some of the greatest fights in the ring on record. He's bouts with Sonny Liston (who he beat for the title in 1964 in one of the greatest fights of all time), Joe Fraser (was 2-1 against lifetime) Ken Norton (1-1 lifetime) and George Foreman were legendary. Same thing too for the fights with Leon Spinks at the end of his career. Ali and Joe Louis are generally regarded as the two greatest fighters to ever step foot in the ring. Muhammad Ali defeated every top heavyweight in his era, which has been called the golden age of heavyweight boxing.
Ali had a highly unorthodox boxing style for a heavyweight, epitomized by his catchphrase "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee". Never an overpowering puncher, Ali relied early in his career on his superior hand speed, superb reflexes and constant movement, dancing and circling opponents for most of the fight, holding his hands low and lashing out with a quick, cutting left jab that he threw from unpredictable angles. His footwork was so strong that it was extremely difficult for opponents to cut down the ring and corner Ali against the ropes. One of Ali's greatest tricks was to make opponents overcommit by pulling straight backward from punches. That's what made him so great in the ring. He may not have been the hardest hitter in the history of the ring, but he may have been one of the smartest fighters to ever step foot inside a boxing ring. He made people look silly, which is a real talent that so few people in the world of sports had.
As good as Ali was at running his mouth in the ring, he was just as talented at backing it up. Same argument could be made of him outside of the ring as well. One of the biggest things that he will forever be rememberd for was holding out of Military service. At the height of the Vietnam War, Ali was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army. He'd said previously that the war did not comport with his faith, and that he had "no quarrel" with America's enemy, the Vietcong. He refused to serve. "My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, some poor, hungry people in the mud, for big powerful America, and shoot them for what?" Ali said in an interview. "They never called me nigger. They never lynched me. They didn't put no dogs on me." Released on appeal but unable to fight or leave the country, Ali turned to the lecture circuit, speaking on college campuses, where he engaged in heated debates, pointing out the hypocrisy of denying rights to blacks even as they were ordered to fight the country's battles abroad.
That was what made Ali so powerful outside of the ring, when he saw something that wasn't right, he went out and fought against it. He could do a little bit of everything in and out of the ring. he could talk the talk and walk the walk Ali was just that good. He wil;l be forever missed
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