Ex­act­ly 50 years ago to­day, T&T and the hal­lowed crick­et ground of the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain wel­comed then heavy­weight cham­pi­on of the world Muham­mad Ali for nine rounds of ex­hi­bi­tion box­ing on Sun­day, Au­gust 22, 1971.

Nicholas Si­mon­ette was the pro­mot­er who was in­vit­ed by then chair­man of the T&T Box­ing Board, Arthur Sealey, to pro­mote the event which fea­tured Ali show­ing of his skills against To­ba­go’s Carl “Big Carl” Bark­er, a sol­dier, and Amer­i­can box­ers Al­fon­so John­son and Ed­die Brooks, both of whom ac­com­pa­nied Ali.

Last Sat­ur­day night wear­ing a pair of white-and-black trunks his grand­fa­ther gift­ed to him, Muham­mad Ali’s grand­son Nico Ali Walsh (grand­moth­er is Be­lin­da/Khalilah and moth­er is Rashi­da) made his pro box­ing de­but with a first-round TKO of his op­po­nent in Tul­sa, Ok­la­homa, USA.

Ali died in 2016, at age 74, as the world mourned the pass­ing of this box­ing leg­end com­mon­ly re­ferred to as the great­est of all time. Muham­mad Ali, whose orig­i­nal name was orig­i­nal name Cas­sius Mar­cel­lus Clay Jr, is wide­ly re­gard­ed by box­ing com­men­ta­tors and his­to­ri­ans as one of the great­est pro­fes­sion­al box­ers of all time.

In 1999, the As­so­ci­at­ed Press vot­ed him the num­ber one heavy­weight of the 20th cen­tu­ry and in the same year was named the sec­ond great­est box­er in his­to­ry, pound for pound by ES­PN, be­hind wel­ter­weight and mid­dleweight leg­end Sug­ar Ray Robin­son.

In De­cem­ber 2007, ES­PN list­ed him sec­ond in its choice of the great­est heavy­weights of all time, be­hind Joe Louis. As a fan favourite though Ali was sec­ond to none, in and out of the ring, not­ed for his brava­do and flam­boy­ance. He won a gold medal in the 175-pound di­vi­sion at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome be­fore turn­ing pro to en­ter­tain box­ing fans the world over for a pe­ri­od of 21 years from 1960 to 1981.

In March 1966, Ali re­fused to be in­duct­ed in­to the armed forces. He was sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly de­nied a box­ing li­cense in every state and stripped of his pass­port. As a re­sult, he did not fight from March 1967 to Oc­to­ber 1970—from ages 25 to al­most 29, his best box­ing years—as his case worked its way through the ap­peals process be­fore his con­vic­tion was over­turned in 1971. Dur­ing this time of in­ac­tiv­i­ty, as op­po­si­tion to the Viet­nam War be­gan to grow and Ali’s stance gained sym­pa­thy, he spoke at col­leges across the na­tion, crit­i­cis­ing the Viet­nam War and ad­vo­cat­ing African-Amer­i­can pride and racial jus­tice.

Some of Ali’s mem­o­rable bat­tles in the ring were against for­mi­da­ble op­po­nents such as Son­ny Lis­ton (twice), Floyd Pat­ter­son, George Chu­va­lo, Hen­ry Coop­er (twice), Jer­ry Quar­ry (twice), Joe Fra­zier (three times, in­clud­ing the Thril­la in Mani­la), George Fore­man (Rum­ble in the Jun­gle/Rope-a-dope), Ken Nor­ton (three times), Lar­ry Holmes and Leon Spinks (twice).

In 1996, Ali was cho­sen to light the Olympic flame at the start of the Games of the XXVI Olympiad in At­lanta, Geor­gia. The out­pour­ing of good­will that ac­com­pa­nied his ap­pear­ance con­firmed his sta­tus as one of the most beloved ath­letes of all time. The sig­nif­i­cant box­ing of his life from 1964 to 1974 was the sub­ject of the film Ali (2001), in which Will Smith starred as Ali.

His life sto­ry is told in the fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­men­tary film, I Am Ali (2014), which in­cludes au­dio and in­ter­view record­ings that he made through­out his ca­reer. Ali was a mem­ber of the in­au­gur­al class of the In­ter­na­tion­al Box­ing Hall of Fame in 1990, and in 2005 he was award­ed the Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom.

As a heavy­weight pro­fes­sion­al, 1960-1981 his stats read as fol­lows:

61 fights with 56 wins, 5 loss­es.

37 of his 56 wins were by knock­out while 17 were by de­ci­sion.

(Pho­tos from the Guardian news­pa­per at the Na­tion­al Archives)