I remember my Dad staying up all night to listen to the second Ali v Liston fight

He rushed to toilet  and missed the early KO

RIP Ali.

R I  P  Muhammad Ali.

                         Rest At  Last The Final Bell.

Float like a butterfly to the cradle in the sky,

Legends like Ali will never die!

RIP

http://www.shieldsgazette.com/news/local-news/the-day-muhammad-ali-came-to-south-shields-1-7947523

It's not just this passing, it's all "notables". The news is:- the person died, all the rest of the waffle is just garbage padded out by so-called "correspondents", hangers-on and/or so-called "editors".

On and on and on ad infinitum. In a way, it degrades whatever made the person "notable".

I would think he was the ultimate example of fame and notoriety, you could walk into a little village in the "Congo " and say the name "Muhammad Ali" and they'd know who you were talking about.............they don't come any bigger than that !!

Not sure if I'd go along with Ali being cajoled into doing something he didn't really want to do.I don't believe anyone could do that if he felt it was alien to his nature. Yes there are a lot of parasites in sport, you've only got to look at Blatter and his henchmen to realise that.

I think his promo tours were for the benefit and for the encouragement of young boxers, those coming up, and those thinking about it. Here was a man who was devoted to his art, and his illness meant nothing to him in the great scheme of boxing. It was his life, his vocation, and his love, and I think he really enjoyed these tours, and his Parkinson's wasn't going to impinge on that. I'm sure he thought it much better anyway than lying on some sun lounger, being fed grapes and Milk Shakes by some flunky. Not sporty minded in any way, even less so by boxing, but 'Legend' is a word that is bandied about freely these days. But Ali was - IS - a Legend. And as Evo alluded to, I don't think there was anyone on the planet who wasn't aware of who, and what he was.

R.I.P.

Ali didnt spend any time in prison - he got 5 years but was out on bail all that time until his conviction was overturned.

On the whole, I'm not a fan of conscientious objectors; but given the need to directly defend their own country, I'm sure there would be a lot less of them. It's when people are given some tenuous link, between killing people in their own country; on the other side of the world and it being in defence of the INVADERS country........that people start asking questions as to the validity of the argument. One has to ask how we'd feel ( or more to the point the USA ) if countries from the other side of the Planet, came to fight on OUR soil; under the excuse that they were stopping us from terrorising them. So I'd hardly condemn Ali, for his moral stance........it was certainly far more logical than the alternative.........and considering the USA lost and withdrew from Vietnam, with their tail between their legs,.......they didn't learn much did they !!

As Ali said himself:

" If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.”

I think if a few more people since then had acted with that kind of integrity the world wouldn't be in the mess it is today