Muhammad Ali

High school

Central High School

Hall of Fame

⭐ International Boxing Hall of Fame

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. — who would become Muhammad Ali — was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky, and grew up in the West End neighborhood, the son of a sign painter and a domestic worker. He attended Central High School in Louisville, where he was a mediocre student but began boxing at age 12 after a chance encounter with a police officer named Joe Martin who ran a boxing gym in the Columbia Auditorium. At the 1960 Rome Olympics he won the gold medal in light heavyweight boxing, and he turned professional immediately upon returning home. He won the world heavyweight championship for the first time in 1964 by stopping Sonny Liston — and announced the same night that he had joined the Nation of Islam and would be known as Muhammad Ali. He was stripped of his title in 1967 for refusing military induction during the Vietnam War, declaring "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong." He was vindicated by the Supreme Court in 1971 and began one of the most extraordinary comeback campaigns in sports history — producing epic fights with Joe Frazier (the "Fight of the Century," 1971), George Foreman ("The Rumble in the Jungle," 1974), and the "Thrilla in Manila" with Frazier again (1975). He was a three-time heavyweight champion and finished with a professional record of 56-5. Beyond boxing, Ali was a poet, activist, and global icon who transcended sport in ways no athlete had before or since. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005. Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky.