The heavyweight GOAT, Muhammad Ali, has had a very interesting life inside and outside of the boxing ring. Being one of the most talked-about personalities in boxing, let's dive deeper and take a look at 5 interesting facts you need to know about the boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
In 1981, a man threatened to jump from the ninth story of a building in L.A.’s Miracle Mile neighborhood. Ali rushed into the building and saved that man from committing suicide by successfully talking the man down from the ledge.
In Oscar Brown, Jr.'s 1969 musical adaptation of Joseph Dolan Tuotti's play Big Time Buck White, Ali played a militant black intellectual who speaks at a political meeting.
In 1974, Ali fought for the title against undefeated champion George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). For American audiences to watch the fight live, the bout began in the early morning hours before the sun dawned on Africa.
Ali supposedly threw his medal into the Ohio River in frustration over the racism he still experienced in his hometown. So, he was given a replacement when he lit the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
Ali's great-grandfather Abe Grady was an Irishman who emigrated to the United States and settled in Kentucky in the 1860s. There he married a freed slave, and one of their grandchildren was Ali’s mother, Odessa Lee Grady Clay.