Muhammad Ali will be laid to rest in his Kentucky home town of Louisville followed by a memorial service led by Bill Clinton, it has been announced, after it was revealed the three-time world heavyweight champion died of septic shock.
Flags have been flying at half-mast on all public buildings in Louisville, where former US president Clinton will lead eulogies at a public memorial on Friday, as well as actor Billy Crystal and American TV sports presenter Bryant Gumbel.
A procession on Friday will take Ali’s body through the streets of Louisville, past the Muhammad Ali Center, travel along the street named after him – the Muhammad Ali Boulevard – and through the neighbourhood where he grew up, “to allow anyone who’s there from the world to say goodbye”, his spokesman, Bob Gunnell, said.
He will be buried at Cave Hill cemetery in a private family ceremony, and an interfaith memorial service, broadcast online, will follow at the town’s sports arena.
Rahman Ali paid tribute to his “sweet, kind” brother who he said should be remembered for his prowess in the ring and devotion to humanitarianism. “There was nobody on this Earth more famous than Muhammad Ali, he was known in every country,” he told the BBC. “God blessed him because he was such a sweet person. My mother and father were sweet, good people, and he came from good stock. He was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful man. He will be missed. There will never be another Muhammad Ali.”
Ali said his brother, who suffered with Parkinson’s disease for more than 30 years, had “loved everybody, he had a good heart. So I cry from joy, and happiness. I want Muhammad to be remembered as a humanitarian, a loving, kind, sweet, good man.”
The boxer, who had nine children, died with his family around his hospital bed, one of his daughters revealed. Hana Ali said his heart did not stop beating for 30 minutes after all other internal organs had failed. Hana, the boxer’s elder daughter with his third wife Veronica Porsche Ali, posted on Instagram:
On Saturday, Barack Obama led tributes in a deeply personal statement, which revealed he kept a pair of Ali’s boxing gloves in his private study.
It said: “Muhammad Ali was the Greatest. Period. If you just asked him, he’d tell you. He’d tell you he was the double greatest; that he’d ‘handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder into jail’. But what made the Champ the greatest – what truly separated him from everyone else – is that everyone else would tell you pretty much the same thing. Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it.”
Ali’s death leaves George Foreman as the sole significant survivor of the golden age of the heavyweights which included Ali, Joe Frazier, Jimmy Young and Ron Lyle.
“Each time one of us leaves, I tell everybody: Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, we were really just one guy,” Foreman told the Press Association. “And every time one slips away, you feel like you’ve lost a piece, and Muhammad Ali was the greatest piece of all.”
Local Muslim leaders also paid tribute to Ali’s dedication to his faith, with Usama Shami, president of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix, calling him a champion of Islam.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said he would consider plans for a permanent memorial to Ali in the capital. A book of condolence has been opened at the exhibition of Ali’s life currently at the O2 arena in Greenwich, south London.
“Muhammad Ali was a giant in and out of the ring – a true champion who broke down barriers throughout the world,” Khan, the first Muslim mayor of London, told The Sunday Times: “He was my all-time hero and a real example of someone who could inspire and change people’s lives without even meeting them. It would be great to have a permanent memorial to Ali in London.”
One of Ali’s last acts was to issue a statement condemning both Islamist extremists and presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims from entering America. Though he did not mention the US Republican presidential hopeful by name, Ali said Muslims “have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda”.
“I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world,” he wrote. “True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion. I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.”
The Rev Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow Push Coalition and a longtime friend of Ali, said: “He was a champion in the ring, but, more than that, a hero beyond the ring. When champions win, people carry them off the field on their shoulders. When heroes win, people ride on their shoulders. We rode on Muhammad Ali’s shoulders.”
