Muhammad Ali — Heavyweight Champion, Conscientious Objector, and Global Icon

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born in segregated Louisville, Kentucky, grandson of a former slave. He took up boxing at age 12 after a police officer suggested he learn to fight following the theft of his bicycle.

Location: Louisville, Kentucky, USA

At 18, Clay won the light-heavyweight gold medal at the Rome Olympics, announcing himself to the boxing world. His professional career began within weeks, and his brash self-promotion — "I am the greatest" — made him a sports-page fixture unlike any boxer before him.

Location: Rome, Italy

Clay defeated feared champion Sonny Liston by sixth-round stoppage to win the world heavyweight title at age 22. Two days later he announced his membership in the Nation of Islam, and in March 1964 he took the name Muhammad Ali, given by Elijah Muhammad — a rename many sportswriters and the American press refused for years to use.

Location: Miami Beach, Florida, USA

Classified for military service in 1966, Ali refused to step forward at induction in Houston, citing his religious objections as a Nation of Islam minister: "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong." He was convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five years in prison and a 10,000-dollar fine, stripped of his heavyweight title, and barred from boxing during what would have been his athletic prime.

Location: Houston, Texas, USA

After a 43-month exile, Ali returned against unbeaten champion Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden in the "Fight of the Century," losing on points — his first professional defeat. Months later the Supreme Court overturned his draft conviction unanimously on appeal, closing the legal chapter of his refusal.

Location: New York City, New York, USA

Ali regained the heavyweight title at 32 by knocking out unbeaten George Foreman in Kinshasa, employing the "rope-a-dope" tactic of leaning on the ropes and absorbing punches until Foreman exhausted himself. The fight became a global spectacle and later the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary "When We Were Kings."

Location: Kinshasa, Zaire

Ali won the rubber match of his trilogy with Joe Frazier when Frazier's corner stopped the fight after 14 brutal rounds in Manila. Ali later called it the closest thing to death he had experienced; the fight sealed one of boxing's great rivalries, though Ali's years of taunting Frazier as an "Uncle Tom" left a lasting rift between the two men.

Location: Manila, Philippines

After losing his title to Leon Spinks in February 1978, Ali won the rematch seven months later to become the first three-time world heavyweight champion. He retired in 1981 with a 56-5 professional record after two comeback losses.

Location: New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson's syndrome in 1984; many of his physicians attributed it to repeated head trauma from his boxing career, though a definitive cause was never established. He remained a global public figure — lighting the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996 and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005 — while his illness made him a visible face of both the disease and boxing's long-term health costs.

Ali died at 74 from septic shock related to his Parkinson's illness. His funeral in Louisville proceeded along a public procession through his hometown and drew eulogies from world figures and thousands of mourners across faiths, reflecting the arc of a life that had divided America in the 1960s and united much of it in admiration by its end.

Location: Scottsdale, Arizona, USA