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Boxing legend Muhammad Ali dies aged 74

In March of 1966, Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces, stating that he had "no quarrel with them Vietcong".[47] "My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn't put no dogs on me, they didn't rob me of my nationality, rape or kill my mother and father.... How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.
source: wikipedia
 
I was an ardent admirer of him as a child and cried when he lost Frazier. A great beyond description . May His Soul R.I.P.
 
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Former world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali was close to death in a Phoenix-area hospital on Friday, a source close to the family said, as speculation swirled about his health.

Ali, one of the best-known figures of the 20th century, was hospitalized this week for a respiratory ailment. Family spokesman Bob Gunnell has said that Ali, 74, was in fair condition, but media reports have said he was in rapidly failing health.

Asked about Ali's condition, the source said: "It's extraordinarily grave. It's a matter of hours."

The source, who had spoken with Ali's wife, Lonnie, added: "It could be more than a couple of hours, but it's not going to be much more. Funeral arrangements are already being made."

Gunnell did not respond to repeated requests for comment about Ali's condition.

Ali has suffered from Parkinson's disease for more than three decades and has kept a low profile in recent years.

The Radar Online website reported on Friday that Ali had been placed on life support, citing "an insider."

The Reuters source close to the family could not comment on that report.

Ali's last public appearance was in April at the "Celebrity Fight Night" gala in Arizona, a charity that benefits the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center.

At the height of his career, Ali was known for his dancing feet and quick fists and his ability, as he put it, to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

He held the heavyweight title a record three times, and Sports Illustrated named him the top sportsman of the 20th century.

Nicknamed "The Greatest," Ali retired from boxing in 1981 with a record of 56 wins, 37 by knockout, and five losses. Ali's diagnosis of Parkinson's came about three years after he left the ring.

Ali, born in Louisville, Kentucky, as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr, changed his name in 1964 after his conversion to Islam.

Ali had a show-time personality that he melded with dazzling footwork and great hand speed. His bouts with such fighters as Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman made him an international celebrity like boxing had never seen.

He became a symbol for black liberation during the 1960s as he stood up to the U.S. government by refusing to go into the Army for religious reasons.

Ali made a surprise appearance at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, stilling the Parkinson's tremors in his hands enough to light the Olympic flame.

He also took part in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012, looking frail in a wheelchair. He has been married four times and has nine children.

Ali's daughter Laila, a former boxer, tweeted a photo of her father kissing her own daughter, Sydney. She thanked supporters for their wishes for Ali, saying, "I feel your love and appreciate it!"

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-boxing-ali-condition-idUSKCN0YQ00M



Remembering Muhammad Ali :(
 
Unfortunately we forget that this world is temporary, and we will have to return one day, and answer for each and every action. If we all remind ourselves this frequently, this world would be a very different place.
Thanks for your insight on this. I can appreciate it truly since I have spent a good part of my life traveling through cities and countries and I know how baggage affects your travel...so what this verse tells us is to keep the baggage to a minimum, stay light and be ready to travel to the next destination.
 
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عظیم باکسر محمد علی باکسنگ رنگ میں اپنی مہارت اور پھرتی کے علاوہ فقرے بازی اور شاعرانہ انداز گفتگو کے لئے بھی مقبول تھے۔ وہ مد مقابل کو اپنے فقروں سے عاجز کردیتے۔ اس کے علاوہ میڈیا سے باتیں کرتے ہوئے بھی وہ اکثر تیز طرار فقرے ادا کرتے۔ ان کے انتقال پر ان کے کہے ہوئے بعض مشہور فقرے یہاں اردو میں پیش کئے جا رہے ہیں جس سے ان کی ذہانت اور طبعی حس ظرافت کا اندازہ کیا جا سکتا ہے:

1۔ میں اتنا پھرتیلا ہوں کہ گزشتہ رات میں نے اپنے ہوٹل کے کمرے کی لائٹ بند کی لیکن کمرے میں اندھیرا ہونے سے پہلے ہی میں اپنے بستر میں تھا۔

2۔ (فلائڈ پیٹرسن کے بارے میں) میں اسے اس بری طرح ماروں گا کہ اسے آئندہ ہیٹ سر پر پہننے کے لئے ’شو ہارن‘ کی ضرورت پڑے گی۔

3۔ (گولف کے بارے میں) میں اس کھیل کا ماہر ترین کھلاڑی ہوں لیکن میں نے ابھی یہ کھیلی نہیں ہے۔

4۔ اگر آپ مجھے شکست دینے کا خواب دیکھ لیں تو بہتر ہے جاگنے کے بعد خود سے معافی مانگ لیں ۔

5۔ دو چیزوں کو مارنا اور دیکھنا مشکل ہے۔ بھوت اور محمد علی۔

6۔ (جارج فورمین کے بارے میں) میں نے جارج فورمین کے سائے کو باکسنگ کرتے اور سائے کو جیتتے دیکھا ہے۔

7۔ کوئی ایسا آدمی موجود نہیں ہے جو مجھے شکست دے سکے۔ میں انتہائی پھرتیلا ہوں، سمارٹ ہوں ، خوبصورت ہوں۔ مجھے تو ڈاک کا ٹکٹ ہونا چاہئے تھا۔ تب ہی کوئی مجھے چاٹ سکتا تھا (شکست دے سکتا تھا)۔

8۔ حکومت کو اب اس گھر کو قومی یادگار بنا دینا چاہئے جہاں میں پیدا اور بڑا ہوا تھا۔

9۔ (جو فریزر کے بارے میں) فریزر اتنا بدصورت ہے کہ اسے اپنا چہرہ جانوروں کے بیورو کو عطیہ کردینا چاہئے۔

10۔ (سونی لسٹن کے بارے میں) سونی لسٹن کچھ بھی نہیں ہے۔ یہ بات نہیں کرسکتا۔ یہ لڑ نہیں سکتا۔ اسے بات کرنا سیکھنے کے لئے تربیت کی ضرورت ہے۔ اسے باکسنگ سیکھنے کی ضرورت ہے۔ اور اب کہ وہ میرا مقابلہ کرنا چاہتا ہے اس لئے اسے گرنے کا سبق سیکھنے کی بھی ضرورت ہے۔

11۔ میں عظیم ترین ہوں ۔ میں نے عظیم بننے سے پہلے ہی یہ بتا دیا تھا۔

12۔ میں گھر میں اچھا انسان ہوں۔ لیکن میں دنیا کو یہ بات بتانا نہیں چاہتا۔ کیوں کہ مجھے معلوم ہوا ہے کہ منکسر مزاج لوگ زندگی میں بہت ترقی نہیں کرتے۔
 
Muhammad Ali, the legendary boxer was among the most well-known and beloved athletes on the planet, passed away in Arizona this Friday at the age of 74. The three-time heavyweight champion of the world was one of the world’s greatest sporting figures. Did you know that Muhammad Ali also made two visits to Pakistan during his lifetime, first in 1988 and then in 1989? Muhammad Ali participated in fourth South Asian Games in 1989 in Islamabad as a special guest. Muhammad Ali visited Data Darbar in Lahore and took pictures with the locals. He also met with the current PM Nawaz Sharif who was the Chief Minister of Punjab at the time.

Condolences have poured in from all across the world. PM Nawaz Sharif expressed deep sorrow and shared a photo with Muhammad Ali, which was taken during their meeting in Pakistan. You can click on the link to see the picture.

https://www.facebook.com/pml.n.offi...446541150445/1294367423925012/?type=3&theater

You can also read President Obama’s Statement on Muhammad Ali at the link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/sports/president-obamas-statement-on-muhammad-ali.html

Our thoughts and prayers are with Muhammad Ali’s family at this difficult time.

Ali Khan

Digital Engagement Team, USCENTCOM
 
Most important news is that he has met NS. Now there is hope NS will be dealt mercifully in hereafter.
 
I was an ardent admirer of him as a child and cried when he lost Frazier. A great beyond description . May His Soul R.I.P.
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Debunking the myths that have glorified Muhammad Ali
By Phil Mushnick

June 5, 2016
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Muhammad Ali connects with a punch to Joe Frazier in 1975.

I realize I’m spitting into the storm here, but there are popular, entered-as-fact myths about Muhammad Ali perhaps worth addressing:

1. Cassius Marcellus Clay, as Ali often shouted, was “my slave name.”

Nonsense — and from the day he was named.

Cassius Marcellus Clay, 1810-1903, was a Kentucky planter, politician and newspaper publisher who, at enormous risk, was a devoted abolitionist in a state — Ali’s home state — where anti-slavery activism could and did leave one dead.

In 1843, Clay survived a bullet fired by a hired gun of slavery proponents. The founding publisher of an anti-slavery Lexington newspaper, Clay’s shop was wrecked by a mob. Undeterred, he published from Cincinnati.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, Clay, appointed minister (what we now call ambassador) to Russia, was among the first and most relentless to urge Lincoln to act to end slavery. Clay donated the land on which Berea College, in 1855, opened — for all races.

The father of baseball Hall of Famer and Ohioan George Sisler was Cassius Clay Sisler, named in honor of this brave abolitionist. As “slave names” went, Ali’s was antithetical.

2. Ali for years suffered from Parkinson’s disease.

Wrong. Parkinson’s disease is mostly a mystery affliction associated with aging. Its syndrome mimics the disease’s symptoms but is both explainable and preventable. Ali’s Parkinson’s syndrome is known as dementia pugilistica — mental and physical debilitation from being hit in the head too often.

When asked about Ali’s health, Don King, who made a fortune from Ali being hit in the head too often, eagerly claimed that Ali has Parkinson’s disease, as if King had nothing to do with it.

Likely the worst beating Ali received was in 1980, at 38, when King was paid to match Ali, his speed and reflexes gone, against Larry Holmes. Requiem for a heavyweight.

I met Ali once, at Pele’s farewell game, 1977, in Giants Stadium. Even then, he appeared glassy eyed, slightly vacant. That he’d fight four more times — 50 more rounds — seems criminal. Ali then lived in a darkening, thickening fog for the next 30 years.

And after King, no one used Ali — until he was all used up — more than the Black Muslims, who would hop on his gravy train and line up for background photo ops until, inevitably, Ali ran low on cash. That’s when his co-religionists were no longer in his picture. Ali, smart as he was, was easily had.

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Muhammad Ali stands over Sonny Liston during their bout in Maine. Ali won the fight with a first round knock-out to claim the heavyweight champion title.

3. As read in books, spoken in documentaries and now written in obituaries and spoken in eulogies, Ali was a champion of the young political left and legions of anti-Vietnam War activists. Ali vs. Joe Frazier remains characterized as American counter-culture vs. establishment.

A gross over-generalization. As a long-haired, hippie-uniformed college student in the early 1970s, I was among many of similar appearance, apparel and politics who backed Frazier. We didn’t like the way Ali cruelly baited Frazier, taking advantage of Smokin’ Joe’s inability to spar verbally and intellectually with Ali. Many of us, raised to dislike bullies, showboats and braggarts, pulled for Frazier.

Sure, Ali, aside from his boxing talent, was often charming, mug-for-the-cameras funny. But when he called Frazier “a gorilla” — a racial slur even spoken by a black man — many of us figured Frazier the better gentleman and sportsman.

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Jesse Jackson at Joe Frazier’s funeral, in Philadelphia in 2011.Photo: Reuters

That Jesse Jackson grandstanded at Frazier’s funeral, eulogizing him as a man of “great dignity,” was appalling. Where was Jackson when Frazier needed him?

And now we’re told that Ali, who denigrated gracious, dignified Joe Louis as an “Uncle Tom,” represented and even created great, upward social change in America. I’m unsure of that, but I know he helped change American sports.

Ali was pandered to by a mass media that suddenly seemed unwilling to see, hear and report wrong from right, choosing to weigh matters as cases of black or white, a dubious method to promote racial equality.

Ali was able to — allowed to — popularize and commercialize trash-talking, name-calling and chest-pounding — something we’ve never recovered from — as few in the media wish to be identified as uncool, to knock something not in society’s best interests, applauding acts of bad-is-good they’d never encourage in their own.

And so, in Ali’s rise, pandering flowered and remains in full, no-upside bloom. “Hah, hah, ain’t he/wasn’t he great?” Well, it depends. He was a great boxer, a world-beater. But a world-changer? For the better? Where? How?

Quickly, boxing promotion news conferences demanded obligatory threats, vile invective and hassles. A part of Ali’s boxing legacy. Modesty, once considered a fundamental attribute, has been TV-conquered by immodesty grown more severe, widespread and ugly in all sports. Ali and the “We’re cool, too!” pandering media broke that ice best left frozen.

And our sports now are even deeper stuck in the morass that Ali and his pandering, give-us-more indulgers introduced as good when they had to know better. Sorry, but that’s the way I saw it, the way I still see it.
 
The man traded the name of his owner for that of his maker.

He was as guilelessly proud, loud and yet gentle at the same
time of it as he was of all things he stood for in true belief in life.

And for all the smoothly delivered antics near a ring, never made
a lasting enemy! He remains with Sidney Poitier one of the social
rolemodels of Black Americans aside the Civil Rights movement.

Although friends with Malcom X, his best gift was this example
of a power both free and restrained, in essence a gentleman.

Oh! And the boxing ...

Good night Sir, Tay.
 
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