BREAKING: Muhammad Ali dies of breathing problems

BOXING legend Muhammad Ali Ali has died in hospital of breathing problems aged 74.

The boxing legend and three-time world heavyweight champion, who had battled Parkinson’s disease for 32 years, was admitted to hospital with a respiratory condition earlier in the week.

His family’s spokesman Bob Gunnell confirmed Ali’s death in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday evening.

Muhammad Ali was, at his peak, arguably the most famous man on the planet.His prodigious boxing talent was matched only by a towering self-belief.”

I am the greatest,” he said, and who could doubt a man who won the World Heavyweight Championship three times.

His outspoken support for civil rights endeared him to millions of people across the world.He was born Cassius Marcellus Clay in Louisville, Kentucky, on 17 January 1942, the son of a sign painter.

He was named after a prominent 19th Century abolitionist.When he was 12, he reported his bicycle had been stolen and told a police officer he was going to “whup” the culprit.The officer, Joe Martin, trained young fighters at a local gym and suggested the youngster learn to box before he challenged the thief.

Clay quickly took to the ring, making his competitive debut in 1954 in a three-minute amateur bout.”

He stood out because he had more determination than most boys,” Martin later recalled. “

He was easily the hardest worker of any kid I ever taught.”Over the following five years, his amateur career flourished and he won a number of awards including the Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions in 1959.

In 1960  he was selected in the US team for the Rome Olympics. At first he refused to go because of his fear of flying.

Eventually, according to Joe Martin’s son, he bought a second-hand parachute and wore it on the flight.It was worth all the effort.

On 5 September 1960, he beat Poland’s Zbigniew Pietrzykowski to become the Olympic light-heavyweight champion.

He received a hero’s welcome when the team returned to New York but the reality of the segregated US society hit home when he got back to Kentucky and was refused a table in a restaurant.

Though only 18, he joined boxing’s paid ranks and began his professional career later the same year with a six-round points win over Tunney Hunsaker, a police chief from West Virginia.”Clay was as fast as lightning,”

Hunsaker said after the bout. “I tried every trick I knew to throw him off balance but he was just too good.”Ali also took on Angelo Dundee, the trainer who would contribute so much to his boxing success.

A steady succession of victories, reinforced by outrageous self-advertising, brought him fame, if not universal popularity.The 22-year-old Cassius Clay upset Sonny Liston to win the world heavyweight title in February 1964

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