Muhammad Ali mark 50th anniversary of day when he won first heavyweight boxing title(Feb 25,1694 - Feb 25,2014)

 

Boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who was then named Cassius Clay, stopped Sonny Liston in the seventh round to claim the world heavyweight crown at age 22 on Feb 25,1964, launching a career that would see him become a global sports icon

 

The day after beating Liston, Clay changed his name and the legend of Ali began. It included refusing to be drafted into the US Army that was sending soldiers to fight in Vietnam, being stripped of his titles and banned from boxing for 3 1/2 years until a US Supreme Court ruling upheld his conscientious objector status to the Vietnam War.

MuhammadAli finished 56-5 with 37 knockouts and won the heavyweight crown three times in all, notably in the Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire in 1974 with an eighth-round knockout of George Foreman and in 1978, when he lost the crown to Leon Spinks in February by split decision but reclaimed it with a unanimous 15-round decision seven months later.

Muhammad Ali retired after that, coming back to lose two later bouts before finally calling it quits for good in 1981

MuhammadAli announed in 1984 that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, which silenced the snappy banter that had been his youthful trademark but did not dim his status in sports or humanitarian efforts

Muhammad Ali visited Iraq and negotiated the release of 14 US hostages from Saddam Hussein in 1990

MuhammadAli-- a gold medal winner from the 1960 Rome Olympics lit the torch at the opening ceremony of the 1996 Centennial Olympics in Atlanta

Muhammad Ali received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian honor in 2005