Eight facts about former boxing champ Muhammad Ali:
• Ali had a show-time personality, dazzling footwork and great hand speed that combined to make him a champion like his sport had never seen. His career record was 56 victories, 37 of them by knockout, and five losses. He held the world championship an unprecedented three different times.
• Fighting under his given name of Cassius Clay, he won a gold medal in the light heavyweight competition at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. In a 1975 autobiography he said he threw the medal into a river one night after being refused service in a Louisville restaurant and being harassed by a gang of whites. Two biographers, however, said Ali actually lost the medal unintentionally.