Category — Ali

Nineteen 2012 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition models paid tribute to boxing legend Muhammad Ali as they took the ring from the historic Ali-Larry Homes boxing match held at Caesars Palace on Oct. 2, 1980. The stunning lineup posed alongside an 8-foot-tall SI cover featuring Ali.
The celebrated Ali/Holmes fight was the first mega-fight ever held on a casino property and set the stage for hundreds of sports events that helped to establish Las Vegas as a top U.S. destination for great sports spectaculars.
From left to right: Crystal Renn, Alyssa Miller, Michelle Vawer, Adaora, Kirby Griffin, Chrissy Teigen, Kate Upton, Anne V, Jessica Gomes, Julie Henderson, Jessica Perez, Nina Agdal, Cintia Dicker, Izabel Goulart, Ariel Meredith, Genevieve Morton.
Image courtesy of Glenn Pinkerton/Las Vegas News Bureau

The Hall of Famer will be forever linked as the influential trainer of Muhammad Ali. Dundee passed today in Tampa, Fla. He was 90.
AP

On Tuesday, Muhammad Ali will hit another milestone. On Saturday, the champ and 350 of his closest friends held an early birthday celebration in his native Louisville.
Courier-Journal

The track and field legend talks about his new book and how the 1968 Olympics changed his life.
ESPN.com

The former heavyweight contender, who battled Ali and Foreman and was considered 1 of the hardest punchers in the division during the 70s, passed Saturday after complications from a stomach abscess. He was only 70.
Denver Post

It will make you laugh and it will make you cry.
I’ve been kinda pouring through Joe Frazier pieces all day. Can’t help it. Frazier and Ali was the best thing in sports when I was a kid growing up in Boley.
This piece, published in 2009, is an excellent read and 1 of the best I’ve read in the past 24 hours. A taste: “Frazier is driving his white Cadillac Escalade, with a handicapped placard hanging off the rearview mirror. He hits the gas and the vehicle flies to the next stoplight, where he brakes hard. Approaching one light, he brakes and also slips the car out of gear to help stop it and avoid read-ending a car that has stopped short in front of him. He explains in matter-of-fact fashion that some people think that kind of thing strips the transmission, but how they’re actually dead wrong about that.”
USA Today

In my eyes, the image above is 1 of the greatest of all time.
The tributes, stories and the occasional lies that accompany some of those stories keep pouring in for the late Joe Frazier, who lost his bout with liver cancer Monday at age 67. What’s the saying? Life’s a bitch and then you die. Frazier could relate.
I was an Ali guy. It started when I was 5, when I overheard my old man bragging about this boxer named Cassius Clay.
“That nigger’s bad!” I can still hear him shouting, the ultimate compliment a black man could receive back in the day. It was 1963.
Initially, Sonny Liston was the enemy for Ali. Then Frazier became the ultimate 1. Ali said so far too often, so it had to be true. But as I grew older and learned to appreciate the legendary Smokin’ Joe, how he could slip punches and bust up bigger men with a ferocious left hook, I realized he was more like me—like him, I grew up a country boy—than Ali could ever be. Still, I related more to Ali. He was God.
Frazier wasn’t but he knew how to tweak God. As George Foreman famously said, Frazier was the only boxer who got angry when you didn’t hit him.
We’re saddened by his death, but we’re thrilled to read and listen to the numerous tributes and stories. We just wanted to pay our respects in a small way to 1 of the greatest of all time.
RIP.

Bummer.
A true legend, the former heavyweight champion passed today from complications of liver disease. He was only 67.
Philly.com