100 things you never knew about Muhammad Ali

This article was originally published in the Daily News sports section on September 12, 2000. it was compiled from three primary sources: "Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times" by Thomas Hauser, "King of the World" by David Remnick and USA Today.

1. Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born in Louisville General Hospital Jan. 17, 1942, at 6:35 p.m. His parents called him "GG" as an infant. His mother's explanation: "You know how babies jabber at the side of their crib - he used to say, 'Gee, gee, gee, gee.'"

2. It's likely that some members of the Clay family were slaves at one time. Cassius' mother, Odessa, had a grandfather, Tom Moorehead, who was the son of a white Moorehead and a slave named Dinah.

3. Clay's mother, whose parents separated when she was a child, was 16 when she was introduced to her future husband, then 20. After they were married, she sought police protection from him on three occasions. His police record shows four arrests for reckless driving, two for disorderly conduct, two for assault and battery and one for disposing of mortgaged property. The couple separated in the early '70s.

4. Ali says a defining moment in his childhood was when a young black named Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman: "Emmett Till was the same age as me, and even though they caught the men who did it, nothing happened to them. Things like that went on all the time."

5. Clay was knocked out only once as an amateur. It happened while sparring against a future pro named Willy Moran. His last loss as an amateur - and his last loss, period, until Joe Frazier decisioned him in 1971 - came when he was 17, against a lefthanded ex-Marine in his mid-20s named Amos Johnson.

6. One of Clay's contemporaries in Louisville was Jimmy Ellis, a future World Boxing Association heavyweight champion. They fought twice as amateurs, with Clay winning the first meeting, Ellis the second. When they met as pros, in 1971, with Clay now Muhammad Ali, it marked the first time in 10 years that Angelo Dundee, who trained both fighters, wasn't in Ali's corner. Ali had consented to let him work with Ellis because he'd get a bigger percentage of the purse.

7. Clay never smoke or drank when he was growing up, but he does admit to two hallucinatory experiences, the result of taking the cap off a gas tank and smelling the fumes.

8. Clay was 17 when he first saw the Atlantic Ocean during a visit to Atlantic City with the Olympic boxing team. Recalls an Amateur Athletic Union official named Bob Surkein, "He looked out at the ocean and said, 'Man, that's the biggest damn lake I've ever seen."

9. Four months before he graduated from high school, Clay took a College Qualification Test and finished in th 27th percentile - which meant 73 percent of those taking the test scored higher.

10. Clay dominated his first three fights in the 1960 Olympics, scoring two unanimous decisions and a second-round knockout. But he trailed after two rounds in the gold-medal bout against Polish lefthander Zbigniew Pietrzkowski, a 1956 bronze medalist, before rallying in the third to take a unanimous decision.

11. Clay recited what would become his first published poem - "How Cassius Took Rome" - when Louisville welcomed him home from the Olympics. The opening lines: "To make America the greatest is my goal; So I beat the Russian, and I beat the Pole; And for the USA won the medal of gold."

12. The start of Clay's professional career was backed by a consortium of 11 white businessmen that called itself the Louisville Sponsoring Group. Ten of the members put up $2,800 apiece; the 11th, organizer William Faversham, paid $1,400. Recalls Louisville lawyer Gordon Davidson, the only living link to the partnership: "[Clay] was very charming and very polite. This PR act was just that, an act. Some of the group thought it was a bit overdone and were embarrassed by it, but most thought it was good at the box office."

13. A crowd of 6,000 in Louisville's Freedom Hall witnessed Clay's professional debut in October 1960 against Tommy Hunsaker, a part-time fighter with a 17-8 record whose regular job was police chief in Fayetteville, W.Va. Hunsaker lost a six-round decision, and said of his opponent afterward, "He'll be heavyweight champion of the world someday."

14. It wasn't just Ali's stunning quickness that made his jabs so lethal. It was the knife-like effect of the blows, an effect created by him twisting his fist at the moment of impact.

15. A month after Clay's pro debut, the Louisville Sponsoring Group dropped local trainer Fred Stoner and - after first choice Ray Robinson said he wasn't interested - sent Clay to California to work with light-heavyweight champ Archie Moore. Clay and Moore were together only about a month, but long enough to produce several ironic twists. Irony No. 1: Moore's camp, just as Ali's would be years later, was decorated with boulders bearing the names of legendary fighters. Irony No. 2: Clay and Moore would meet in the ring in November 1962, with Clay winning on a fourth-round TKO.

16. Angelo Dundee, who took over as Clay's trainer in December 1960, working out of Miami's Fifth Street Gym, was recommended to the Louisville Sponsoring Group by Harry Markson, president of Madison Square Garden Boxing. The group originally wanted Ernie Braca, but he was committed to Ray Robinson.

17. In February 1961, Dundee arranged for Clay, now 4-0, to spar with former heavyweight champ Ingemar Johansson, who was in Florida training for a rematch with Floyd Patterson. Promoter Harold Conrad remembers Clay taunting Johansson to the point of anger: "He started chasing Clay around the ring, throwing right hands and missing by 20 feet, looking ludicrous. At the end of the second round, he was so exhausted that [his trainer] called it off."

18. Clay was such a brilliant self-promoter that he once conned Life into running a five-page photo exclusive on his underwater training regimen. In truth, he had no such regimen. He couldn't swim.

19. Clay was 7-0 as a pro when he met Alonzo Johnson on national television - unprecedented for a fighter so recently out of the amateur ranks. Madison Square Garden arranged the bout for the "Gillette Cavalcade of Sports. " Clay took a 10-round decision.

20. In February 1962, Madison Square Garden decided to showcase Clay, now 10-0, in New York against Sonny Banks. It was a fight that would come to define Clay. He was knocked down in the opening round by a brutal left hook to the chin, but bounced back to deliver exactly what he'd predicted: a fourth-round knockout.

21. An example of Ali's incredible athleticism: In 1966, he told Jim Brown to hit him as hard as he could. Brown tried, and couldn't touch him. All the while, Ali kept slapping him in the face.

22. Eighteen days after defeating Sonny Banks, Clay met Philadelphian Don Warner in Miami Beach and stopped him in the fourth round - one round earlier than he'd predicted. Clay's explanation: Warner wouldn't shake hands before the fight, so he'd subtracted one round for poor sportsmanship.

23. With New York in the midst of a 113-day newspaper strike, Clay was virtually his own promoter for his March 1963 fight against Doug Jones in Madison Square Garden. He did just fine - the Garden sold out, and A.J. Liebling later wrote: "I hadn't seen anything like it since the Louis-Marciano fight in 1951. But Louis was an immortal, making a last stand against a coming immortal, while Clay and Jones had records like semifinalists."

24. It took a bit of Dundee chicanery for Clay to defeat reigning British heavyweight champ Henry Cooper in London in 1963. Clay was knocked down near the end of the fourth round and went to the corner wobbly. But Dundee bought about a minute of extra recovery time by making it appear that Clay had a torn glove. Clay stopped Cooper in the next round.

25. Clay released an album of poems and monologues in 1963. He wrote some of the material and employees of Columbia Records wrote the rest. The album enjoyed moderate commercial success.

26. At the November 1963 press conference announcing Clay's first meeting with Sonny Liston, Gordon Davidson, the lawyer for the Louisville Sponsoring Group, revealed that the partners had tried to convince Clay he wasn't ready: "We finally concluded Cassius doesn't try to learn anything from one fight to the next and really doesn't care about becoming one of the finest heavyweights who ever lived. All he wants is to be the richest. Wise or unwise, it's his decision and his career."

27. Three weeks before the first Liston fight, the Miami Herald's Pat Putnam quoted Cassius Clay Sr. as saying the "Black Muslims" had taken him out on a boat and threatened to drown him because he'd accused them of stealing his son's money. After the article was published, Putnam and his family were threatened. But the threats stopped after Putnam asked Clay to intervene.

28. Ali's mother shared her husband's distrust of the "Black Muslims," but she blamed the Louisville Sponsoring Group for her son's conversion. "The big mistake," she once said, "was when they sent him to train in Miami all by himself. That's when the Muslims got to him."

29. Clay's younger brother by two years, Rudolph (now Rahman Ali), made his professional boxing debut on the undercard of the first Liston fight. He won a unanimous decision over Chip Johnson.

30. Before the first Liston fight, Clay was suspicious of Dundee, who he'd begun to associate - because of Dundee's Italian heritage - with the gangsters around Liston. Clay was so fearful of being drugged before the fight that he assigned his brother to guard his water bottle in the dressing room.

31. Clay was such a heavy underdog for the first fight against Liston that editors at the New York Times told boxing writer Robert Lipsyte to map out a route from the arena to the hospital in case Clay wound up there.

32. Big 5 legend Les Keiter handled the blow-by-blow account of the first Liston fight for ABC radio.

33. Ali now admits he was intimidated by Liston: "Just before the fight, when the referee was giving us instructions, Liston was giving me that stare. And I won't lie; I was scared."

34. Ali says he first heard about "Black Muslim" leader Elijah Muhammad during a Golden Gloves tournament in Chicago in 1959. But it wasn't until 1961 - when he attended a Miami meeting at the invitation of a man named Sam Saxon (now Abdul Rahaman) - that his religious conversion began. Ali remembers that meeting as "the first time I felt truly spiritual in my life."

35. As much as he loved his former name - "Cassius Marcellus Clay. It's a beautiful name," he once said - Ali describes his name change as "one of the most important things that happened to me in my life. " For the record, " Muhammad " means one worthy of praise, "Ali" means the most high. Elijah Muhammad gave him the name, announcing it in a March 6, 1964, radio broadcast.

36. Less than a month after his name change, Ali - watching a fight in Madison Square Garden - walked out to a chorus of boos when MSG Boxing president Harry Markson refused to introduce him by his new name. Markson now admits he was wrong.

37. Curious to find out just how much Ali really knew about the Nation of Islam after his conversion, Newark Star-Ledger columnist Jerry Izenberg sat him down one afternoon before the second Liston fight in 1965. Izenberg's conclusion: "Basically, what he knew was separation. I don't think he understood much more at all."

38. A fire of unknown origin broke out in Ali's apartment the night Nation of Islam representative Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. It's widely presumed that the fire was an act of revenge for Malcolm's murder, which many of his followers believe was ordered by Elijah Muhammad .

39. Ali and his first wife, Chicago cocktail waitress Sonji Roi, married 41 days after they met in 1964. They were introduced by Elijah Muhamad's son, Herbert, who would become Ali's manager when the Louisville Sponsoring Group's contract expired in September 1966. Ali confidant Howard Bingham claims Herbert paid Sonji for the first date.

40. Ali's marriage to Sonji lasted just 17 months. Sonji blames the "Black Muslims" for the breakup: "After we separated, Ali wasn't supposed to be in my company. He was forbidden even to talk with me. If I called, the next day the number would be changed. That's how dangerous the Muslims thought I was."

41. Ali admits to once hitting Sonji: "It's the only time I did something like that, and after I slapped her I felt sorrier than she did. It hurt me more than it hurt her. I was young, 22 years old, and she was doing things against my religion, but that's no excuse. A man should never hit a woman."

42. Weight was a problem for Ali as early as the second Liston fight. At the start of training, he'd ballooned up to 231 pounds - 21 more than he'd ever carried into a fight.

43. The second Liston fight, originally slated for Nov. 16, 1964, in Boston, was postponed six months when Ali was stricken with a hernia three days before the fight. It was moved to a schoolboy hockey arena in Lewiston, Maine, when Massachusetts boxing authorities suddenly decided not to sanction it, fearing the promoter was tied to organized crime.

44. Ali displayed a cruel side more than once in the ring. The first time was against Floyd Patterson in 1965. Ali toyed with him unmercifully, letting him linger through a prolonged beating, all because he had said before the fight that a "Black Muslim" champion disgraced "the sport and the nation. " Referee Harry Krause, who finally stopped it in the 12th round, said afterward, "It was hurting me to watch."

45. The benevolent Ali: On the flight home from his 1966 victory over Henry Cooper in London, he spotted referee Teddy Waltham, who had lost his earnings from the fight, about $2,400, to a pickpocket. Ali reached into his pocket for $2,400 and gave it to Waltham.

46. Ali was placed under FBI surveillance in May 1966, about three months after he'd first declared his opposition to the Vietnam War. A report dated June 14, 1966, describes the following: an "extremely upset" Ali having to be physically restrained outside his Miami home from attacking his father, who, "obviously intoxicated" and carrying a knife, was shouting that the Muslims were ruining his name and that he was going to kill any of them who were around the house.

47. Ali did so poorly on the Army aptitude exam that he was retested two months later for confirmation. His original score was so low - 14 points below passing - that the Army declared his IQ to be 78. Ali was humiliated, but tried to deflect it with humor, telling reporters, "I said I was the greatest, not the smartest.

48. Ali's 1966 fight against George Chuvalo in Toronto was the direct result of his anti-war stance. The fight originally was slated for Chicago - against Ernie Terrell - but the Illinois State Athletic Commission decided it violated state law. Louisville was eyed next, but the Kentucky State Senate passed a resolution condemning Ali. Eight other cities rejected the fight before Toronto finally took it, but Terrell than backed out because few theaters wanted the closed-circuit telecast.

49. Ali never considered staying in Canada to avoid the draft after the Chuvalo fight. Asked before the fight if he would be going home or staying, he said, "Of course I'm going home. The United States is my birth country. People can't chase me out of my birth country. I believe what I believe, and you know what that is. If I have to go to jail, I'll do it, but I'm not leaving my country to live in Canada."

50. Ali and Terrell finally met in February 1967 in a brutal battle in Houston. Terrell now held the World Boxing Association version of the title that had been taken from Ali, and he'd insisted on calling his former sparring partner "Clay. " Early in the fight, Terrell fractured a bone under his left eye - he claims he was deliberately thumbed - and Ali began attacking his eyes mercilessly, all the while shouting, "What's my name, Uncle Tom? What's my name? " Sports Illustrated's Tex Maule called Ali's 15-round decision "a barbarous display of cruelty."

51. Ali's 1966 TKO of Karl Mildenberger in Frankfurt marked the last time he would fight on network television for nearly seven years, or until his first fight against Ken Norton. This was partly because of the profitability of closed-circuit television, but probably more because of pressure from political leaders and advertisers.

52. Ali idolized Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion and, like Ali, a government target: "Jack Johnson was the most influential person in my career. He did things in the ring defensively that I saw on film and tried to copy. He came along at a time when black people felt they had nothing to be proud of, and he made them proud."

53. In denying Ali's conscientious objector claim for exemption from the draft, the Justice Department ignored the recommendation of a retired Kentucky State Circuit Court judge named Lawrence Grauman. He'd ruled at a special hearing in August 1966 that Ali was ". . .sincere in his objection on religious grounds to participation in war in any form."

54. The New York Times referred to Ali as Cassius Clay throughout the '60s. The newspaper's official position: He hadn't gone through a court of law to change his name.

55. The "Ali Shuffle" was unveiled in his 1966 fight against Cleveland Williams. Ali promised before the fight that it would be the biggest dance innovation since "The Twist."

56. Ali was at his most devastating in his third-round TKO of Williams. Many feel it's because he felt sorry for Williams - who'd been shot with a .357 magnum in a 1964 confrontation with a Texas state highway patrolman - and didn't want to hurt him.

57. On April 28, 1967, the day Ali refused to enter the Army, 25 young men were called for induction in Houston along with him. By day's end, all 25 were soldiers at Fort Polk, La. Ali, who would be indicted 10 days later, remembers encountering a woman carrying a small American flag as he left the building. The woman shouted: "You get down on your knees and beg forgiveness from God. My son's in Vietnam and you no better than he is. I hope you rot in jail."

58. Ali's legal advisers gave him little hope of winning his fight against the government. One lawyer, Hayden Covington, told him: "It looks like trouble, champ. This isn't like any case I've had before. Joe Namath can get off to play football and George Hamilton gets out because he's going with the president's daughter, but you're different. They want to make an example out of you."

59. The criminal case against Ali was titled incorrectly: "United States of America v. Cassius Marsellus Clay. " This was because he'd misspelled his former middle name while filling out a Selective Service questionnaire six years earlier.

60. Former attorney general Ramsey Clark, the man who ultimately approved Ali's prosecution, was a liberal who says he had "grave doubts" about the Vietnam War and that the Ali indictment involved "some hard choices. " He says now, " Muhammad Ali has made an enormous difference. He brought out the better angels in millions of people."

61. At least one person believes Ali was considering a government offer to go into the Army in a non-combat role. "We had at least one discussion about whether he'd be publicly humiliated if he changed his position and went into the Army," says Mort Susman, the U.S attorney in Houston at the time of Ali's indictment. "He was very close to changing his mind, but some of his advisers wanted to make a martyr out of him."

62. Several months after the indictment, 10 of the country's most prominent black athletes met with Ali in Cleveland to discuss the possibility of his entering the Army. Bill Russell was among those present, and said afterward: "I envy Muhammad Ali. He has an absolute and sincere faith. I'm not worried about Muhammad Ali. He is better equipped than anyone I know to withstand the trials in store for him. What I'm worried about is the rest of us."

63. Ali's conviction - the date was June 20, 1967 - came after one day of testimony and 20 minutes of deliberation by the all-white jury of six men and six women. Carl Walker, a black assistant U.S. attorney who presented most of the government's case, admits now he always felt Ali would win in the end: "When the Supreme Court reversed his conviction, I wasn't surprised. I thought he should have been granted conscientious objector status all along, but that wasn't a decision anyone in our office could make."

64. This was Ali's reaction after the announcement of an eight-man elimination tournament to determine a new heavyweight champion: "Let the man that wins go to the backwoods of Georgia and Alabama or to Sweden or Africa. Let him stick his head in an elementary school. Let him walk down a back alley at night. Everybody knows I'm the champion. My ghost will haunt all the arenas. I'll be there, wearing a sheet and whispering, 'Ali-e-e-e! Ali-e-e-e!'"

65. Ali lectured at some 200 colleges during his exile, and he says he enjoyed it. But he also says it was hard work: "First I wrote out all my ideas on paper. Then I wrote them again on note cards, studied them every day, and practiced giving speeches in front of a mirror with [wife] Belinda listening. Sometimes I tape recorded it so I could hear myself and learn how to improve what I said. I did that for three months until I was ready."

66. Ali was jailed for 10 days in December 1968 for driving without a valid license in Dade County, Fla. Said his lawyer, Henry Arrington: "He got sentenced for being Cassius Clay. Everyone is caught up in the hate Clay hysteria."

67. Ali's conviction was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in May 1968 - even though the court acknowledged that blacks were under-represented on draft boards across the country.

68. On April 19, 1971, the Supreme Court finally heard Ali's case. Chauncey Eskridge argued for Ali, U.S. solicitor general Erwin Griswold for the government. Remembers Griswold: "I didn't have any personal feelings one way or the other about Mr. Ali. I argued the case myself because the question of Selective Service was full of pressures and emotions, and I just thought I ought to take the case on. I thought it was a very close case. You win some, you lose some; and this one we lost."

69. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned Ali's conviction June 28, 1971 - but not at first. With Thurgood Marshall recusing himself, the original vote was 5-3 in favor of the government. Justice John M. Harlan shifted his vote to make it 4-4, and then Justice Potter Stewart suggested a compromise based on a discrepancy in the government's argument. The last holdout: Chief Justice Warren Burger.

70. Eliijah Muhammad briefly suspended Ali from the Nation of Islam in April 1969, angry to learn that Ali wanted to return to boxing. It took Herbert Muhammad 's pleading for Elijah to finally relent.

71. As Ali's exile from boxing dragged on, money became a bigger and bigger problem. So he got involved in two ventures designed by friends to help him make money - a documentary called "A/K/A Cassius Clay" and a computer fight against Rocky Marciano (Marciano KO'd him in the 13th round). He also successfully played the title role in a Broadway musical - "Buck White."

72. For nearly three years after Ali was stripped of the title, Ring magazine continued to recognize him as heavyweight champion. But three weeks after Joe Frazier knocked out Jimmy Ellis in the fifth round of their Feb. 16, 1970, unification bout, Ring acknowledged Frazier as champion. Ali's reaction: "Joe Frazier wasn't just given the title. He had to fight for it, and he had to fight the best around except for me, so I can't take nothing from him. He had to keep on living, regardless of what happened to me."

73. Promoter Harold Conrad says he tried unsuccessfully in 22 states to get Ali a license to fight during the exile. There were said to be enough votes on the California State Athletic Commission until Gov. Ronald Reagan announced: "That draft dodger will never fight in my state, period. " A deal for a fight in Tijuana fell through when the Justice Department, which had lifted Ali's passport after his conviction, refused to return it.

74. Ali's comeback fight against Jerry Quarry in Atlanta met with major opposition from Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox and members of Congress. It finally came off, on Oct. 26, 1970, for three reasons: (1) There was no state athletic commission in Georgia, (2) a black state senator named Leroy Johnson was influential and (3) an eight-round sparring exhibition at Morehouse College seven weeks before the fight went off without trouble.

75. Ferdie Pacheco, Ali's longtime physician, describes the young Ali as "the best physical specimen I've ever seen. " But that no longer was true after the layoff. Without his legendary leg speed, Ali was letting himself take punches for the first time in his life - and, Pacheco feels, laying the groundwork for the physical damage he eventually suffered. Pacheco also had to start numbing Ali's hands before every fight because he'd developed bursitis and couldn't punch without pain.

76. It took a court order for Ali to carry out the second leg of his comeback, against Oscar Bonavena in New York. With the state refusing to lift its ban against Ali, the NAACP filed a discrimination suit in federal court and Ali's lawyers came up with a list of 90 people who had been licensed to box in New York with criminal convictions on their records. Three days after District Judge Walter Mansfield ruled in Ali's favor, the State Athletic Commission said it reluctantly would allow Ali to fight.

77. Referee Arthur Mercante, who didn't find out he was working Ali-Frazier I until 4 that afternoon, says he scored the fight 8-6-1 for Frazier (the two judges had it 9-6 and 11-4 for Frazier): " Muhammad could have had a draw on my card by changing one round, and he could have won the fight by changing two. If he hadn't leaned against the ropes taking punches for a couple of rounds, he could have won that fight."

78. An example of the historical implications of Ali-Frazier I: Shortly after his victory, Frazier was invited to address the legislature in South Carolina, the state where he was born. It was the first time in four decades a black man had been so honored.

79. In 1971, before the first Frazier fight, Ali nearly signed a contract to fight Wilt Chamberlain, who had said his greatest dream was to fight for the heavyweight title. Chamberlain started training with the great Cus D'Amato, believing that "there was a chance for me to throw one punch and take Ali out. " But then Ali lost to Frazier and the negotiations fell apart.

80. In 1972, Ali nearly signed a $250,000 contract with Warner Brothers to play the lead in "Heaven Can Wait. " But the deal needed to be approved by Elijah Muhammad , and he killed it because the plot - an athlete dying and returning in the body of another man - was contrary to Muslim beliefs. Ali was disappointed, but would get to star four years later in a movie about himself, "The Greatest."

81. Ali nearly fought in South Africa, but the November 1972 bout against Al Jones was canceled when the promoters failed to produce the necessary line of credit. Herbert Muhammad 's justification for the fight: "My father didn't look no different at South Africa than he did at the United States; he believed both of them were run by devils."

82. The first time Ali was cut in a professional fight was against Bob Foster in 1972 - a fight in which Ali dropped his opponent seven times before knocking him out in the eighth. The cut, below the left eyebrow, required five stitches to close.

83. Ali trained less than three weeks for his first fight against Ken Norton in 1973. One reason was overconfidence. Another was a twisted ankle he says he suffered while... playing golf.

84. Don King, who promoted Ali-Frazier II and was instrumental in putting together Ali-Foreman, first met Ali in the mid-'60s. They were introduced by Lloyd Price, who wrote and recorded such rock hits as "Personality" and "Stagger Lee."

85. A scene from after the Foreman fight, as described by Newsweek's Peter Bonventure: "There was no press. The entourage was gone. We went over to Ali's cottage. And three hours after the greatest victory of his life, Muhammad Ali was sitting on the stoop, showing a magic trick to a group of black children. And it was hard to tell who was having a better time, Ali or the children."

86. Two months after the victory over Foreman, Ali visited the White House at the invitation of President Ford - a scene that would have been unthinkable several years earlier. Said Ford: "I felt it was important to reach out and indicate individually as well as collectively that we could have honest differences without bitterness."

87. Ali always has eschewed the use of bodyguards, even during the period when he was one of the most hated men in America. His explanation: "I don't need no bodyguard or guns. God is my bodyguard; Allah watches over me. A man filled with fear don't live and enjoy life. So I trust in God to look after me. Allah fixes the time when all of us will be taken."

88. With ticket sales going badly for his 1976 fight against Richard Dunn in Munich - the last in which he'd record a knockdown - Ali agreed on the eve of the bout to cut his purse by $100,000 in exchange for 2,000 tickets. He distributed the tickets to U.S. military personnel stationed in Germany.

89. In June 1976, Ali met Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki in Tokyo for what was billed as "the martial arts championship of the world. " Ali was kicked in the legs so often during the 15-round draw that he wound up being hospitalized for blood clots and muscle damage when he got back to the United States.

90. Ali's 1977 fight against Earnie Shavers was the first clear indication that the end was near. The day after Ali's 15-round decision, MSG Boxing president Teddy Brenner told the media, "As long as I'm here, Madison Square Garden will never make Ali an offer to fight again. This is a young man's game. Ali is 35; he has half his life ahead of him. Why take chances? " A week later, longtime physician Ferdie Pacheco parted company with Ali.

91. The Shavers fight also was a testament to Ali's incredible magnetism: It sold out Madison Square Garden and the NBC telecast was seen by 70 million viewers. The ratings indicated that more than half of all the TV sets owned in the United States were tuned in.

92. The city of Louisville honored Ali in 1978 by renaming Walnut Street - an east-west thoroughfare that runs through downtown - for him. But the proposal barely passed: The city council approved it by a 6-5 margin.

93. In June 1979, right around the time Ali was filming a four-hour television miniseries with Kris Kristofferson called "Freedom Road," he announced his retirement from boxing. But nine months later, he'd agreed to fight World Boxing Association champ John Tate, a fight that never happened because Ali got belted in the mouth while sparring after he'd spat out his mouthpiece to taunt his opponent.

94. A chilling excerpt from Thomas Hauser's " Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times": "All totaled, Ali's ring earnings surpassed the combined earnings of every heavyweight champion who had come before him. Moreover, he'd been well-situated to take advantage of numerous business ventures and endorsement opportunities. But by 1979, when Ali retired, most of the money he'd earned was gone. Much of it had been generously spent and used to pay his taxes, but a lot had been lost to bad deals, exploitation and outright theft by people he'd trusted."

95. Before his fight against Larry Holmes, Ali says someone from Philadelphia offered him a substance that - had he put it on his gloves - would have temporarily blinded Holmes. Ali declined, saying it would be against his religion.

96. Ali and his current wife, Lonnie, have known each other since 1962, when Lonnie's family moved into a house across the street from Ali's parents. Lonnie was 5, he was 20. She says she knew at 17 that they'd marry someday. In 1982, with Ali's health declining, she moved to Los Angeles to "look after Muhammad " while going to business school at UCLA. They married in November 1986, four months after he divorced his third wife, Veronica Porche.

97. Ali lists his all-time top 10 heavyweights as follows: 1. I'm naturally No. 1; 2. Sonny Liston - He hit hard. He hit me so hard, he jarred my kinfolk in Africa; 3. Floyd Patterson; 4. George Foreman; 5. Joe Frazier; 6. My third wife; 7. Rocky Marciano; 8. Jack Johnson; 9. Jack Dempsey; 10. Archie Moore.

98. Ali's surprise appearance at the start of the 1996 Olympics was as moving for him as it was for the rest of the world. Remembers his wife, Lonnie: " Muhammad wouldn't go to bed for hours and hours that night. He was floating on air. He just sat in a chair back at the hotel holding the torch in his hands. It was like he'd won the heavyweight title back a fourth time."

99. Ali is father to nine children. The youngest is Asaad Ali, an 8-year-old boy he and Lonnie adopted. Says Lonnie: " Muhammad finally found a playmate. He wasn't around much for his other children, but now he gets to play with Asaad all the time."

100. A haunting quote from a 1976 Ali appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation": "I think boxing is dangerous. The brain's a delicate thing. My jaw's been broken, and one nerve is just coming back from where I couldn't feel for a year or two. I got my eardrum busted in Manila training for Joe Frazier, and I just had it rebusted; the same one. I would advise nobody to box if they get hit too much and it's too dangerous."