Muhammad Ali traveled the world as a fighter and humanitarian, but he always came home to Louisville.
His Kentucky hometown was where Ali, as a gangly teenager, began to develop his boxing skills — the dazzling footwork and rapid-fire punching prowess. The three-time world heavyweight boxing champion never forgot his roots, returning to his old West End neighborhood and visiting high school classmates even after becoming one of the world’s most recognizable men.
Now the focus shifts back to Ali’s hometown as the world says goodbye to the man who emerged from humble beginnings to rub elbows with heads of state.
Ali, slowed for years by Parkinson’s disease, died Friday at age 74 in an Arizona hospital. His funeral is scheduled for Friday afternoon in Louisville.
Ali chose his hometown as the place for one of his lasting legacies: the Muhammad Ali Center, which promotes his humanitarian ideals and showcases his remarkable career. Ali and his wife, Lonnie, had multiple residences around the U.S., but always maintained a Louisville home.
The city embraced its favorite son right back. A downtown street bears his name. A banner showcasing his face — and proclaiming him “Louisville’s Ali” — towers over motorists near the city’s riverfront.
Lifelong friend Victor Bender knew Ali ever since they were boyhood sparring partners. Bender remembered Ali — then known as Cassius Clay — as a dedicated athlete who worked tirelessly to hone his boxing skills.
He also remembered Ali’s human touch — his willingness to reach out to others.
“Only health changed him,” Bender said in a September 2014 interview. “When he was healthy enough, he could talk with anybody. He loved children. He’d reach out and touch anybody, because he loved people.
“Sometimes his handlers would say, ‘Look, we’ve got to go. We’ve got to meet the schedule.’ And he’d say, ‘The schedule will have to wait.’”
Ruby Hyde remembered the heavyweight champ cruising into her neighborhood in a Cadillac with the top down. “All the kids jumped in and he rode them around the block,” she remembered.
Ali’s boyhood home — a small, single-story frame house — still stands in the working-class neighborhood where he grew up. The bright pink home on Grand Avenue was renovated by its current owners and opened for Ali’s fans to get a glimpse into his life before the world came to know him.
Ali’s storybook boxing career — highlighted by epic bouts with Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Sonny Liston — began with a theft.
His bicycle was stolen when he was 12. Wanting to report the crime, the shaken boy was introduced to Joe Martin, a police officer who doubled as a boxing coach at a local gym. Ali told Martin he wanted to whip the culprit. The thief was never found, nor was the bike, but soon the feisty Ali was a regular in Martin’s gym.
“He always had a good left-hand punch,” Bender recalled. “He could follow up. The fundamentals were always there.”
Ali developed into a top amateur boxer. His early workouts included racing a school bus along the streets of Louisville, said Shirlee Smith, his classmate at Louisville Central High School.
“Every time the bus would stop to pick up kids, he would pass us up,” she recalled. “Then we’d pass him up. Everybody on the bus would be laughing and teasing him. He was training at that time, and we were just having fun. But he was focused on what he wanted.”
Ali’s boyhood neighbor, Lawrence Montgomery Sr., said he saw early glimpses of the bravado that earned Ali the “Louisville Lip” nickname.
“He told me then that he was going to be the heavyweight champion of the world, and I didn’t believe him,” Montgomery said. “I told him, ‘Man, you better get that out of your mind.’ But he succeeded. He followed through.” AP
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