Goodbye champ: World mourns Muhammad Ali

REAL HERO: Muhammad Ali with his wife Lonnie Ali, left, and his sister-in-law Marilyn Williams. (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO: Tributes to Muhammad Ali poured in from across the sporting, cultural and political world after his death at age 74 with many saying there would never be another one like him. Ali, who had long suffered from Parkinson’s syndrome which impaired his speech and made the once-graceful athlete almost a prisoner in his own body, died a day after he was admitted to a Phoenix-area hospital with a respiratory ailment.

Ali was fondly remembered not just as a heavyweight boxing icon but also for his fight for social justice, while others recalled his warmth and generosity, how he was equally at home with presidents and people on the streets.
As the first black president of the United States, Barack Obama said Ali was “a man who fought for us” and placed him in the pantheon of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.
“His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today,” Obama said in a statement.
George Foreman, Ali’s most famous knockout victim from the Rumble in the Jungle, noted Ali’s other main rival, Joe Frazier, in tweeting: “Ali, Frazier and Foreman... we were one guy. A part of me slipped away, the greatest piece.”
“We lost a legend, a hero and a great man,” said Floyd Mayweather, who retired last year as an unbeaten welterweight champion. "You were a champion in so many ways. You 'fought' well. Rest well."
Don King, who promoted the Rumble in the Jungle, said Ali will live on forever alongside other US civil rights heroes.
“He was tremendous, not just a boxer, a great human being, an icon,” King said. “Muhammad Ali’s spirit, like Martin Luther King Jr., will live on. That’s why Muhammad Ali will never die.”
Ali spoke out for African-American civil rights in the 1960s, carrying on his fight against injustice and sacrificing the prime years of his own career in the process.
Few could argue with his athletic prowess at his peak in the 1960s. With his dancing feet and quick fists, he could — as he put it — float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
Former US president Bill Clinton said he had been “honored” to award Ali the Presidential Citizens Medal at the White House in January 2001, just before leaving office.