Muhammad Ali - Profile

In this profile video learn all about the history of the ledged Muhammad Ali.

Born January 17, 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky was Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. He went on to change his name to Muhammad Ali after he won his first professional heavy weight championship. At age 12, play began fighting in the amateur ranks and in 1960, Olympics in Rome in the 175 pound division. He won a gold medal. In October of the same year Clay won his first professional boxing match. He went on to win these next 18 matches, 15 by knockout. In February 1964, Clay was set to fight against Sonny Liston, the heavy weight champion at the time. Even though Clay was the underdog of the boxing match, he completely trash shot Liston. He says he’s going to win, saying he’s going to kill and all the normal boxing over here but his prediction came true to the shock of many boxing fans from around the world. Cassius Clay in fact did beat Sonny Liston that day in Miami Beach. Clay was always an extremely controversial person. Only two days after winning the heavy weight championship from Sonny Liston, he converted to the nation of Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. In the 1960s, it was set controversial move that many newspaper refused to accept this and were not to print Muhammad Ali as his name. Ali was involved in more controversy in 1967, when drafted to fight in the US War, he refused and at first he was given conscience as objector status. However, after stated he wasn’t against all wars and would participate in an Islamic holy war. They revoked the status and he was fined $10,000.00 and sentenced to five years in prison. They took away his heavy weight title. They took away his license to box. It wasn’t until four years later that the US Supreme Court changed this decision because of procedural grounds. In 1970, Ali began boxing professionally again and while he’d lost lot of that agility, he still continued to beat a lot of boxers. It was until several years later where he got himself into a heavy weight title fight again. After years of working as weight closer to a heavy weight title, and finally in 1974, he got a chance to fight George Foreman, heavy weight champion. This fight was called “Rumble in the Jungle” and took place since that year. In the eight rounds, Ali not tells Foreman and regained for the second time the heavy weight championship. Now Ali was such a great fighter. He always thought a lot of trash but the thing was he always backed it up.