Timeline: The Life and Times of Muhammad Ali, 'The Greatest'

From boxing legend to civil rights champion and political activist, Muhammad Ali was in a league of his own

Muhammad Ali passed away Satruday, June 4, 2016, after years of debilitating Parkinsons' Disease. Born Cassius Marcellus Clay in 1942  in Louisville, Kentucky, Ali would during his lifetime defy multiple social conventions, setting himself up as a spokesperson for the African American community, as well as for anti-Vietnam war activists, and later as a peaceful messenger of Islam.

Here’s brief timeline of the life of a man who was known simply as ‘The Greatest’.
 
1960: As Cassius Clay, he caught the world’s eye when he won the Olympic gold in September in the light-heavyweight category. He beat Zbigniew Pietrzykowski of Poland

 

1964: He cemented his place in professional boxing by beating Sonny Liston to the heavyweight title in February 1964, a time when the civil rights movement was at its peak.
 
1964: Shortly after his win, Clay joined the Nation of Islam, which was gaining popularity among African Americans, changing his name to Muhammad Ali.  He later adopted the more mainstream Sunni Islam.
 
1965: In May, Ali retained the heavyweight title when he knocked out Liston in under a minute.
 
1967:  He quickly fell from grace, at least in the eyes of the US government after he refused to serve in the Vietnam War, saying "I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong". He refusal in April to be drafted led to his criminal conviction on draft-evasion charges in June and the stripping of his title.

He was stripped of his boxing licence by most states, as well as his passport.
 
1970: Ali missed out on almost four years of peak athletic performance because of the conviction, returning only 1970 to beat Jerry Quarry in a heavyweight fight in Atlanta after Senator Leroy Johnson helped him get a licence from the City of Atlanta Athletic Commission.
 
1971: Ali then lost a 15-round bout to ‘Smokin’ Joe Frazier in the famed Madison Square Garden in New York in March. The match had been nicknamed ‘Fight of the Century’ and was broadcast live to 35 countries.

 
1971: Ali won a different kind of battle a couple of months later, in June, when the US Supreme Court overturned the anti-draft conviction on grounds of conscientious objections and said he was improperly drafted to begin with.
 
1974: The boxer, who had been likened to two species together in the catch phrase ‘Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee’, got his revenge against Frazier in a 12-round rematch at the same venue.
 
1974: Later the same year, in what would become one of the most famous fights of all time ‘Rumble in The Jungle’, Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round in Kinshasa, Zaire.

 
1975: In June that year, Ali announced he would retire from the sport after a title defense against Joe Bugner. However, he returned to the ring only months later.
 
In September, he once again beat Frazier in a match that was known as ‘Thrilla in Manila’.
 
1976: Ali again announced his retirement from boxing to dedicate himself to Islamic causes, but returned soon.
 
1979: He announced a third retirement, but then came back again in 1980.
 
1984: Was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s, at the age of 42.
 
1996: Ali lit the Olympic flame at the Atlanta Summer Games in the US, where it became evident that his Parkinson’s had advanced significantly. His neural degeneration has often been attributed to Ali’s ‘rope-a-dope’ strategy, in which he would lean back against the ropes and take a beating, including to the head, in hopes of tiring his opponent before fighting back.

 
1998: Ali was honoured with a Messenger of Peace honor by the United Nations
 
2015: Having been a political champion for blacks and Muslim for most of his adult life, Ali spoke out after Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump called for barring the entry of foreign Muslims into the US.
 
In a statement addressed to “Presidential Candidates Proposing to Ban Muslim Immigration to the United States”, Ali wrote “We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda… They have alienated many from learning about Islam.”