“I remember him lighting the Olympic flame in Atlanta, and he struggled and he was there shaking but it was really a sign of courage and a sign of hope not just to people who are struggling with Parkinson’s disease, but other diseases, that you still can have dignity in the face of such enormous challenges,” Walid said. “(Ali) would say there was a hidden blessing in it.”īy being so public about his diagnosis, Walid said Ali was able to show the world that one can still have courage and hope in the face of suffering. “I remember him saying that he was humbled by God allowing him to have a disease, to show him who was really the greatest, that God is the greatest,” he said. “He reflected a very strong faith in the face of that debilitating disease,” Walid told CNA. Never one to accept defeat and with a keen ability to inspire hope in others, Ali used his diagnosis to raise awareness and funding for research on the progressive neurological disease.īut it was not just his fighting attitude, but his religious belief, that kept him moving forward.ĭawud Walid, Executive Director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said Ali’s trust in God helped his perspective after receiving what would be a devastating diagnosis for someone who had been so active. In 1984, at the age of 42 and just a few years into retirement from boxing, Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. While boxing legend Muhammad Ali will go down in history as “The Greatest” fighter, some of his greatest fights – for hope, courage, and human dignity – took place outside the ring. After half an hour, Ali had his arm around the man’s shoulder and led him to safety. “Yesterday in Los Angeles, he responded like a superhero when a distraught man threatened suicide.”Īli told the distraught man that he was his brother, that he loved him and wanted to take him home to meet his friends. 20, 1981, edition of the CBS Evening News. “Former heavyweight champions slip out of the news as easily as ex-presidents, but Muhammad Ali was never your garden-variety champion of all the world,” Walter Cronkite said on the Jan.
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On January 19, 1981, in Los Angeles, Muhammad Ali talked a man down from jumping off a ninth-floor fire escape, an event that made national news.