Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay) started boxing at age 12 in Louisville, Kentucky, after his bicycle was stolen and he told a local policeman he wanted to “whup” whoever took it. The officer - also a boxing coach - invited him to train at his gym instead.
At 18 Ali won Olympic gold in 1960. Four years later he beat the fearsome Sonny Liston to win his first world heavyweight title. He changed his name after joining the Nation of Islam, and in 1967 he refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War. He was stripped of his title and banned from boxing for over three years, losing what would have been his peak fighting years.
He came back to win the title twice more, in some of the most famous fights in boxing history - including the “Rumble in the Jungle” against George Foreman in 1974. Later in life he developed Parkinson’s disease, but kept appearing in public - most movingly when he, hands shaking, lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta in 1996.
