The best boxser to egsist in the world



Muhammad Ali

He was born and raised in Louis ville, Kentucky, and began training as an amatuer boxer when he was 12 years old. At age 18, he won a gold medal in the light hevyweight division at the 1960 Summer  Olympic in Rome, then turned professional later that year, before converting to Islam after 1961. At age 22, in 1964, he won the world hevyweight championship from Sonny Liston in a major upset. He then changed his name from Cassius Clay, which he called his "slave name", to Muhammad Ali. He set an example of racial pride for African American and resistance to white domination during the Civil Rights Movment.

In 1966, two years after winning the heavyweight title, Ali further antagonized the white establishment by refusing to be drafted into the U.S. military, citing his religious beliefs, and opposition to American involvement in the viednam War. He was eventually arrested, found guilty of draft evasion charges, and stripped of his boxing titles. He successfully appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturnd his conviction in 1971, by which time he had not fought for nearly four years and thereby lost a period of peak performance as an athlete. Ali's actions as a conscientious objector to the war made him an icon for the larger counterculturegeneration.