When people discuss Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay, they often just focus on the positives.
And there were a lot of them: Muhammad Ali was a hero for the ages.
But the famous boxer wasn't perfect by a long shot.
This is about Ali's shortcomings and regrets.
Here's the tragic real-life story of Muhammad Ali.
In his heyday, Ali was an author of trash talk.
Yet he could scarcely read growing up.
Ali had undiagnosed dyslexia, which blighted his childhood.
Citing writer Jonathan Eig, NPR noted that one of Ali's classmates considered him, quote,
"as dumb as a box of rocks."
Ali avoided failure by cheating his way through school.
Even so, he nearly flunked out of high school and finished 376th out of 391, according to
CBS.
"I barely got out of school.
I got out of school mainly because I was a champion.
I actually didn't pass."
In adulthood Ali made light of his struggles, quipping,
"I never said I was the smartest, I said I was the greatest."
Jokes aside, Ali's fourth wife, Lonnie, told CBS,
"If you can't read, you feel left out of everything."
That's why she and Ali started Go The Distance, a reading program for black children.
Ali was raised a Baptist, but aspects of Christianity bothered him.
As the Courier Journal reported, Ali didn't feel he could relate to biblical figures because
they were always assumed to be white.
In 1962, Ali, then still known as Cassius Clay, attended a Saviour's Day rally in Chicago.
Put on by the Nation of Islam, the event kicked off with a speech by Malcolm X.
According to historian Johnny Smith, the speech utterly wowed Ali.
Meanwhile, Ali impressed Malcolm X with his magnetic personality.
Malcolm X became a mentor to Ali and converted him to the Nation of Islam.
It was a controversial move, reportedly criticized by civil rights icons like Jackie Robinson
and Martin Luther King.
Ali grew close with Malcolm X, who himself was a deeply divisive figure in America.
When Ali hung out with Malcolm X while he was training to fight heavyweight champion
Sonny Liston, the fight was almost canceled by an incensed promoter.
In 1964, Ali's father told the press his son had been brainwashed and called the Nation
of Islam corrupt.
Ali's associations with the Nation and Malcolm X also made the FBI nervous, and as the New
York Times reported, the bureau thoroughly investigated him through the years.
As time went by, the friendship between Ali and Malcolm X started to crumble.
In 1964, Ali publicly declared himself a Black Muslim, but Malcolm X began denouncing the
faith.
As the Independent explained, the civil rights leader rejected the Nation of Islam's anti-white
philosophy.
X derided Nation leader Elijah Muhammad as a hypocrite and womanizer who knew practically
nothing about traditional Islam.
He invited Ali to follow him on a new spiritual journey, but the boxer wasn't ready to question
Elijah's teaching.
Ali coldly rebuffed Malcolm X, an act that ended their friendship.
Ali eventually left the Nation to become a Sunni Muslim.
By that point Malcolm X had been assassinated, preventing Ali from making amends.
He later said,
"Turning my back on Malcolm was one of the mistakes I regret most in my life."
For years, much of the American public detested Ali for his outspokenness and religious beliefs.
Despite being the undefeated heavyweight champion, he spent 1966 boxing abroad because U.S. promoters
didn't see him as bankable, per the CBC.
Once he refused to fight in Vietnam, he wasn't allowed to fight anywhere.
As The Atlantic detailed, America declared Ali eligible for the draft in 1966.
The champ blasted the idea, announcing:
"My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry
people in the mud for big powerful America…
Just take me to jail."
Uncle Sam obliged.
In 1967, Ali resisted his military induction in person, resulting in a criminal conviction,
$10,000 fine, and five-year prison sentence.
Plus, he was stripped of his championship and banned from boxing.
"What in the hell is a heavyweight title and a few sneaky dollar bills for my people's
freedom?"
Ali successfully appealed his conviction, which kept him out of prison.
But he was also barred from boxing for three years.
Trainer Angelo Dundee lamented that the ordeal robbed Ali of the best years of his life and
perhaps a level of greatness we can only imagine.
Of course, despite his objections to participating in the violence of warfare, Ali's personal
life was filled with violent words and deeds that have only added shades of gray to his
legacy and reputation.
In 1975, Muhammad Ali shared what he called "words of wisdom" with Playboy:
"When we are right, no one remembers, but when we are wrong, no one forgets."
In that same interview, Ali said some very, very wrong things.
He advocated hanging people based on who they date.
Ali followed the teachings of the Nation of Islam and vehemently opposed interracial dating.
When asked to clarify, Ali replied:
"A black man should be offed if he's messing with a white woman."
He further argued that if a Muslim woman dates a non-Muslim man, black or white,
"Then she dies.
Off her, too."
To bolster his case, Ali noted that historically whites lynched black men, quote,
"... for even looking at a white woman."
According to the Telegraph, for years, Ali felt superior to black athletes who didn't
hold his views.
"Once they can get 'em a white girl, a blonde or brunette or a $100,000 home or a show on
Broadway, usually, every negro watching this show now will tell you, that you can't talk
to 'em."
In 1964, Herbert Muhammad, the son of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, introduced
Ali to waitress and model Sonji Roi.
As detailed in the book Muhammad Ali: I am the Greatest, Roi said Ali asked her to marry
him on their first date.
Herbert thought this was a terrible idea.
Muslim women were expected to dress conservatively and refrain from wearing makeup.
Yet Ali married her about a month after they met.
About 10 months after they married, Ali filed for an annulment.
In his words,
"[Roi] wouldn't do what she was supposed to do.
She wore lipstick; she went into bars."
The Guardian reported that in court, Ali complained that men could see her underwear through her
tight pants.
He also derided Roi's choice to wear a knee-length red dress and makeup.
Ali grew so frustrated with his wife's disobedience that he slapped her.
He later expressed remorse, saying,
"[The slap] hurt me more than it hurt her."
Despite her husband's controlling behavior, Roi didn't want a divorce.
Ali had to pick between love and religion.
He chose the latter.
Despite having the world's greatest boxer for a dad, Muhammad Ali Jr., the son of his
second wife, Belinda Boyd, didn't have the greatest childhood.
Ali Sr. had a hectic schedule, which didn't leave much room for father-son bonding.
Junior was largely reared by his grandparents.
Speaking with the New York Post in 2014, he couldn't recall having a single family meal.
When Ali Sr. was around, he was great fun, performing magic tricks, wearing scary masks,
and generally making his kids smile.
When he wasn't around, things were tough.
According to Junior, bullies constantly wanted to fight him, and he couldn't distinguish
true friends from starry-eyed phonies.
He said:
"I didn't know who really loved me."
Adulthood brought more sorrow for Ali Jr.
His father's Parkinson's disease severely limited their ability to interact.
He blamed Ali Sr.'s fourth wife, Lonnie, for widening the rift between father and son.
Junior alleged that he could barely take care of his wife and two kids, scraping by with
charitable donations.
Once his father died, Ali Jr. reportedly inherited $6 million, and according to his wife, he
abandoned her after.
With the help of statisticians, author Jonathan Eig estimated that Ali took some 200,000 hits
during his career.
That includes his 61 professional bouts, his numerous amateur bouts, training, and 500
exhibition rounds.
About half of those punches likely struck his head.
Ali intentionally made himself an in-ring punching bag during the latter years of his
career, hoping to tire out opponents.
Eig explained that Ali misguidedly thought taking hits would strengthen his cranium:
"In fact, he encouraged his sparring partners to hit him in the head."
Ali's physician believed all those shots to the head led him to develop Parkinson's.
Unconvinced, Ali sought a second opinion from an immunologist who diagnosed him with so-called
Muhammad Ali syndrome in 1988.
The immunologist said that because of years of exposure to household pesticides, Ali needed
blood cleanings to rebound.
While that particular doctor was later convicted of fraud, scientific research has indeed revealed
that heavy pesticide exposure can increase the risk of contracting Parkinson's by 41
percent.
It's entirely possible that pesticides, punches, or both doomed Ali to suffer the ravages of
Parkinson's in later life.
As Ali's career waned, it was especially painful for his daughters, Maryum and Hana.
In an interview with the Independent, Maryum relived the horror of watching Ken Norton
fracture her dad's jaw, saying she believed he'd never talk again.
Hana couldn't bring herself to watch Ali's final fights.
It eventually got so bad that his daughters sometimes prayed he would lose so his career
could end.
"I would retire if I had to get hit in my pretty face all that long, you understand?"
In 1971, doctors first observed signs of lasting brain damage in Ali.
He had just lost a hellacious fight against Joe Frazier.
Even though he was advised to quit, Ali hopped back in the ring in almost no time.
During a 27-month period, he fought 13 bouts.
Ali's doctors said he did it for "quick money."
Ali's money disappeared almost as quickly as he made it.
Eig wrote that the boxer wasted mountains of cash on his marriages, made countless loans
to friends, and supported his father, brother, and others financially.
In 1976, he had a wallet-ruining divorce.
He then remarried and had another child.
To compensate, he fought match after match without sufficient recovery time.
Ali first exhibited telltale symptoms of Parkinson's disease in 1981.
Once agile and articulate, he slurred his words and made slow, shaky movements.
He was formally diagnosed in 1984 at age 42.
Medication slowed the advance of the illness, but the Guardian pointed out that Parkinson's
creates other complications such as insomnia and depression.
Ali would go from being unable to control his movements to being immobile.
Ali's mind remained sharp, CBS reported.
As his body and speaking ability eroded, he fully understood, but couldn't fully express
how he felt.
Even so, GQ contributor Peter Richmond visited Ali in 1998 and saw not tragedy, but triumph.
He marveled at how content the ex-athlete seemed as he labored to eat a forkful of cake.
He saw divine meaning when Ali pretended to levitate after struggling to even stand.
Awed by his experience, Richmond wrote that Ali had never seemed godlier.
But what the author saw as contentment might have been a face that couldn't show frustration.
Per the Mayo Clinic, Parkinson's impairs a person's ability to make facial expressions.
One has to wonder whether Richmond simply witnessed a man clinging to the fading vestiges
of his former self.
By 2016, after a decades-long bout with Parkinson's, the man whose lightning-fast hands had brought
him championships, fame, and money could no longer sign his own name at age 74, per USA
Today.
Veronica Porche, the third of Ali's four wives and the mother of two of his children, remarked
that she hadn't talked with her ex-husband for a long time because he couldn't talk.
Ali contracted an unnamed respiratory ailment which sent his already-weakened anatomy into
panic mode.
The result was sepsis, a blood-based inflammatory response to illness that wreaks havoc.
In an attempt to heal, Ali's body essentially killed itself.
He went into septic shock, and his organs failed in quick succession.
The last organ to die was his heart, which reportedly outlasted the rest of his body
by 30 minutes.
While the last years of Ali's life were painful and sad, it's still difficult to think of
anyone who lived a life as full as him.
Yes, it was full of triumph and tragedy in equal measures, but despite it all, it's impossible
not to agree with Ali's own assessment of himself.
He was the greatest.
"Only last week I messed up a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean, I make medicine sick."
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