Muhammad Ali, the three-time heavyweight champion boxer whose electrifying prowess in the ring and controversial outspokenness outside of it made him one of the world’s most recognizable personalities of the 20th Century, died Friday after a battle with a respiratory illness at a Phoenix hospital. He was 74.
Ali family spokesperson Bob Gunnell said Saturday that Ali’s funeral will take place in his hometown of Louisville, Ky., Friday and include a morning motorcade through the city, private burial at Cave Hill cemetery and a public memorial at the KFC Yum! Center.
Gunnell said that former President Bill Clinton, broadcaster Bryant Gumbel, and actor Billy Crystal will deliver the eulogies at the afternoon memorial which will be streamlined live around world.
The spokesman said Ali died of septic shock "due to unspecified natural causes." He said the boxing legend died Friday at 9:10 p.m. local time, spending the last hour of his life surrounded by his family. He was initially hospitalized in the Phoenix area on Monday.
One of Ali's daughters described her father's last moments, saying his heart wouldn't stop beating for 30 minutes after all of his other organs failed. Hana Ali wrote on Instagram that "no one had even seen anything like it.
She said the family was surrounding Ali, hugging and kissing him, holding his hands and chanting an Islamic prayer while his heart kept beating as his other organs failed. She called it a "true testament to the strength of his spirit and will.
I think he will be rememembered as a man of the world who spoke his mind and wasn’t afraid to take a chance and went out of his way to be a kind and benevolent individual who changed the world,” Gunnell said at a news conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Reaction to Ali’s death immediately poured in on Twitter early Saturday from former boxing champions to celebrities and politicians.
: 2016-06-05 18:27:04 | : 1493