Daily Times

LOS ANGELES: Boxing icon Muhammad Ali died on Friday, a family spokesperson said in a statement.

“After a 32-year battle with Parkinson’s disease, Muhammad Ali has passed away at the age of 74,” spokesperson Bob Gunnell said. Ali, whose fame transcended sport during a remarkable heavyweight boxing career that spanned three decades, had been hospitalised in the Phoenix, Arizona, area with a respiratory ailment this week.

Concern for the three-time heavyweight world champion had grown throughout Friday amid reports that his respiratory trouble was complicated by the Parkinson’s that had left the fighter called “The Greatest” increasingly frail.

Known globally not only for his storied ring career but also for his civil rights activism, Ali had been hospitalised multiple times in recent years. He spent time in hospital in 2014 after suffering a mild case of pneumonia and again in 2015 for a urinary tract infection.

His Parkinson’s, thought to be linked to the thousands of punches he took during a brutal career studded by bruising battles inside the ropes, had limited his public speaking for years.

But he continued to make appearances and offer opinions through his family members and spokespeople. In April, he attended a Celebrity Fight Night Dinner in Phoenix that raised funds for treatment of Parkinson’s.

In December, he issued a statement rebuking US presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. “Muhammad Ali transformed this country and impacted the world with his spirit,” said longtime boxing promoter Bob Arum. “His legacy will be part of our history for all time.”

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari tweeted about the loss of the king of ring.

-Eight facts about former boxing champ Muhammad Ali:

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.”

* Claiming conscientious objector status, Ali refused to be inducted into the U.S. 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 U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction.

* 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.

* 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.

* The US Army measured Ali’s IQ at 78. In his autobiography he said, “I only said I was the greatest, not the smartest.”

Reham Khan also tweeted about the loss.

Other famous personalities also broke internet with their expressions of grief on Muhammad Ali’s death.