Unlike a lot of his opponents Ali lived a quiet sober life eating healthily and rarely touching alcohol which ultimately helped him to gain the title of Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World. Clay befriended Sam Cooke and many others in the music business who came from Gospel singing backgrounds but was undeterred and became known as Mohammed Ali. Set in the early sixties when Martin Luther King was fighting against all forms of segregation it seemed an unusual path to go down. Against what we in the West assume, Cassius Clay wanted segregation by colour to remain. The driving force behind his conversion appeared to be the idea that integrating people of different colour was not something he believed in. It is relatively rare for someone with his Christian upbringing to convert to Islam but after forming a friendship with Malcolm X he was persuaded to do just that.
He was funded by a group of honest businessmen from his hometown at a time when the sport was being run by the mafia and linked to organised crime.
He was young, gifted and black and moved to Miami to further his training as a boxer. Cassius Marcellus Clay was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky to Christian parents who attended the Baptist Church.
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