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00:29I am the greatest.
00:32By his account, he floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.
00:37According to Sports Illustrated and the BBC, he was the sportsman of the 20th century.
00:43That honour would have come as no surprise to the three-time world heavyweight champion
00:47who always said he was the greatest.
00:50Ahead of his 1963 fight against Britain's Henry Cooper,
00:53still boxing under his real name Cassius Clay,
00:56he let fly with his cocky prediction of an easy victory.
01:13His arrogance proved justified.
01:16By the end of the year, he'd amassed a record of 19 straight wins with 15 knockouts,
01:21earning him a crack at Sonny Liston for the world title.
01:27In the lead-up to the clash in Miami in February 1964,
01:30Liston endured his own fair share of Clay's trademark taunts.
01:35Fifteen times I have told the clown what round he's going down,
01:38and this chump ain't no different.
01:40He'll fall in eight to prove that I'm great,
01:42and if he keeps talking that, I'm gonna cut his ass.
01:45The fight came under threat of cancellation due to rumours of the young contender's links
01:49with Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam,
01:51which at that time was viewed as a hate group.
01:55According to Ali's 1975 autobiography,
01:58promoter Bill Favisham persuaded him to delay his intended conversion to Islam
02:02until after the fight, so as not to put off the crowds.
02:07Despite his underdog status,
02:09Clay's famous speed and agility kept him out of trouble in the early rounds,
02:13and by round three, he was ahead on points,
02:16while Liston had a cut to his eye.
02:20Liston failed to answer the bell at the start of round seven,
02:23and Cassius Clay had delivered on his promise to shake the world.
02:27Now world champion, he revealed he was a member of the Nation of Islam
02:31and declared his support of separatism,
02:33renaming himself Muhammad Ali.
02:37He successfully defended his title nine times
02:40before his boxing licence was suspended in 1967
02:43for refusing to sign up to fight in the Vietnam War.
02:47He made a comeback in the 1970s
02:49and suffered his first ever professional defeat
02:51at the hands of Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden in 1971.
02:55Frazier knocked Ali down in the 15th with a left hook
02:58and retained his title with a unanimous decision.
03:01Nine years later,
03:03despite doctors finding a hole in the membrane of his brain,
03:06Ali went ahead with a WBC world title fight against Larry Holmes.
03:11He lost the fight and retired the following year.
03:14Not long after, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease,
03:18which brought about tremors and the decline of his motor function.
03:22Debate as to whether the condition had been brought on by boxing raged,
03:25but Ali insisted he had no regrets about his choice of career path.
03:30Now on his fourth marriage, he's fathered two sons and seven daughters,
03:34one of whom, Laila, has followed him into the ring,
03:37despite his famous objections to female boxing.
03:40Muhammad has never been one to do anything halfway,
03:43and he has never settled for doing something second best
03:46than anything that he has done in the ring,
03:48in his work on the humanitarian causes, or in his personal life.
03:54On a trip to Afghanistan on behalf of the United Nations Children's Fund,
03:58his legal advisor confirmed that he is still very much on the ball.
04:03He's very sharp and he's still fit
04:07and able to do all of the things that he was able to do before,
04:10just a little bit slower.
04:12In 2005, he was the guest of honor at the opening of a $60 million monument
04:17to his success in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was born in 1942.
04:25As well as showing off his boxing memorabilia,
04:28the Muhammad Ali Center is an official showcase
04:31for his humanitarian ideals of peace and understanding.
04:34I just like the fact that people for years to come
04:37will be able to see what my dad was about,
04:39not only as a fighter, but as a person,
04:41and hopefully inspire other people to be better.
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