Ali won the world heavyweight title for the first time aged just 22, beating Sonny Liston in Miami 
 
 US President Barack Obama and boxing great George Foreman have led worldwide tributes to Muhammad Ali, who has died at the age of 74. 
 
 "Ali shook up the world - and the world is better for it," Obama said. 
 
 Foreman, who was beaten by Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974, said: "Muhammad Ali made you love him." 
 
 British Prime Minister David Cameron, musician Sir Paul McCartney, boxers Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather and golfer Tiger Woods also paid tribute. 
 
 Ali was admitted to a hospital in the US city of Phoenix, Arizona on Thursday suffering from a respiratory illness, a condition that was complicated by Parkinson's disease. 
 
 The three-time world champion died from septic shock caused by "unspecified natural causes", his spokesman Bob Gunnell said. 
 
 Ali's funeral will take place in his home town of Louisville, Kentucky at 19:00 BST on Friday, 10 June, where flags have been flying at half-mast since his death was announced. 
 
 Former US president Bill Clinton and comedian Billy Crystal will deliver eulogies at the service, which will be open to the public. A procession will also be held in Louisville on the same day. 
 
 'A wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit' 
 
 Muhammad Ali attended Barack Obama's inauguration as president in January 2009 
 
 In a lengthy statement, Obama said both he and wife Michelle "pray that the greatest fighter of them all finally rests in peace". 
 
 "Like everyone else on the planet, Michelle and I mourn his passing," he said. "But we're also grateful to God for how fortunate we are to have known him, if just for a while; for how fortunate we all are that The Greatest chose to grace our time." 
 
 Ali's quick wit and vocal indignation over racial discrimination made him a compelling character away from the ring. He also refused to be drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War because of his religious beliefs, resulting in him losing his licence and world title. 
 
 "He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn't. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing," Obama added. 
 
 "It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognise today. 
 
 "He wasn't perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved. But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes - maybe because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves. 
 
 'Something greater than a boxer' 
 
 Ali and Foreman met in the famous Rumble in the Jungle on 29 October 1974 
 
 Speaking to BBC Radio 5 live, two-time world champion Foreman said: "Muhammad Ali was what I call beautiful. He has been something special. 
 
 "The man was the greatest. Forget about boxing, he was one of the greatest men to appear on television, in the media." 
 
 Foreman's loss to Ali in Kinshasa, Zaire [now DR Congo] 42 years ago stands as one of the most iconic moments in any sport. 
 
 Ali's 'rope-a-dope' strategy tired the unbeaten Foreman in the 80 degree heat, allowing him to force a stoppage in the eighth round. 
 
 "Little did I know I would be facing something greater than a boxer," Foreman said of the fight. 
 
 "He stood the test. He took everything I had and gave back worse. I loved the man. I wanted to beat him and knock him out but I loved the man." 
 
 'He stood for the world' 
 
 Don King, who promoted many of Ali's fights, including the Rumble in the Jungle, said: "It's a sad day for life. I loved Muhammad Ali, he was my friend. Ali will never die. 
 
 "Like Martin Luther King, his spirit will live on. He stood for the world." 
 
 Eight-weight world champion Manny Pacquiao described Ali as a "giant". 
 
 "Boxing benefitted from Muhammad Ali's talents but not as much as mankind benefitted from his humanity," the Filipino said. 
 
 Floyd Mayweather, a world champion across five divisions, added: "There will never be another Muhammad Ali. The black community all around the world, black people all around the world, needed him. He was the voice for us. He's the voice for me to be where I'm at today." 
 
 Listen: Muhammad Ali a 'complete inspiration' - Wladimir Klitschko 
 
 Boxing stars react on Twitter 
 
 Former undisputed world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson 
 
 Former WBC heavyweight champion Frank Bruno 
 
 Former WBA and IBF light-welterweight champion Amir Khan 
 
 'We were very lucky that he chose boxing' 
 
 Barry McGuigan, former world featherweight champion, said: "Everybody wanted to box because of him. He was just so amazing in every way. More than anything else, it was how humble and how brilliantly charismatic he was. 
 
 "He was a beautiful-looking man, a beautiful-looking individual and he had so much compassion. He was the greatest sportsman there has ever been and we were very lucky that he chose boxing." 
 
 World cruiserweight champion Tony Bellew described Ali as "the ultimate hero". 
 
 "It's heartbreaking news to wake up to. The greatest sportsman of all-time in my opinion. He transcended the sport and this is a sad day," he said. 
 
 "I hope something can be named after him. He can never be replicated." 
 
 Former world super-middleweight and light-heavyweight champion Joe Calzaghe said Ali was his "inspiration". 
 
 "People loved him, he was someone completely different, he backed it up in the ring and everybody wanted to tune in and watch him fight," the Welshman said. 
 
 "There'll never be another Muhammad Ali. He was a superstar." 
 
 Tributes flow in from beyond boxing 
 
 British journalist Michael Parkinson interviewed Muhammad Ali four times and remembers him as boxing's biggest ever star. 
 
 "He was a rockstar," Parkinson told BBC World Service. "It was not often I was gobsmacked but as he walked across the studio floor I'd never seen a more graceful or beautiful man, he was extraordinary. 
 
 "He was a man who could fell you with a blow - kill you maybe - yet he had beautiful hands with long tapering fingers." 
 
 Media playback is not supported on this device Muhammad Ali: "I wear one suit a day, I can only eat one meal a day, I can drive one car a day" 
 
 Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney said "the world has lost a truly great man". 
 
 "Dear Muhammad Ali. I loved that man. He was great from the first day we met him in Miami, and on the numerous occasions when I ran into him over the years," McCartney said in a statement. 
 
 "Besides being the greatest boxer, he was a beautiful, gentle man with a great sense of humour who would often pull a pack of cards out of his pocket, no matter how posh the occasion, and do a card trick for you." 
 
 The Beatles met Ali at the boxer's training camp in Miami in 1964 
 
 British Prime Minister David Cameron said: "Muhammad Ali was not just a champion in the ring - he was a champion of civil rights, and a role model for so many people." 
 
 Former US President Bill Clinton said Ali possessed "a blend of beauty and grace, speed and strength that may never be matched again". 
 
 "We watched him grow from the brash self-confidence of youth and success into a manhood full of religious and political convictions that led him to make tough choices and live with the consequences," he added. 
 
 "Along the way we saw him courageous in the ring, inspiring to the young, compassionate to those in need, and strong and good-humoured in bearing the burden of his own health challenges." 
 
 The ANZ Stadium in Sydney displayed a tribute to Muhammad Ali before the international football friendly match between Australia and Greece on Saturday 
 
 Golfer Tiger Woods paid this tribute to Ali 
 
 Former Beatle Ringo Starr was among the thousands to pay tribute on social media ||||| Muhammad Ali’s death Friday brought his longtime friend and promoter Bob Arum to recall the former heavyweight champion as “the most transforming figure that I have encountered – for America and the world.” 
 
 Ali died at 74 in a Phoenix hospital, where he was moved this week for a respiratory illness, causing him to require life support Friday as family members came to his bedside. 
 
 He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s more than 30 years ago, moving many to tears with his arm-shaking lighting of the Olympic torch at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, and family spokesman Bob Gunnell told NBC Friday, “We don’t have an official cause of death yet, but it has to be from complications of Parkinson’s.” 
 
 It was the three-time heavyweight champion’s dynamic personality and fighting that will be most remembered. 
 
 Veteran boxing publicist Bill Caplan worked on two Ali fights, including his famed 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire against then-unbeaten George Foreman. 
 
 “He was a great athlete, but the greatest publicity man I’ve ever known. He would do anything you asked [promotional-wise] and would think of a lot of himself,” Caplan said, recalling a scene months before the Foreman fight where the two heavyweights met casually inside an empty Hilton Hotel boardroom in Caracas, Venezuela. 
 
 A look at the life and career of boxing legend Muhammad Ali. 
 
 “I was like a fly on the wall for that,” Caplan said. “Ali was doing color on ABC with Howard Cosell. Ali couldn’t be any kinder one-on-one. He gave Foreman advice on how to handle being the champion, like he was a Dutch uncle -- couldn’t have been nicer. 
 
 “Then we walked outside, where there were a lot of people in the lobby and Ali said, ‘You see this robot [emulating Foreman’s slow-moving power punches]? You know what I’m going to do to him?’ 
 
 “You saw the two faces of Ali in one second. George was laughing and laughing. He got it.” 
 
 After Ali beat Sonny Liston for the heavyweight belt, he faced being drafted to the Vietnam War, and refused – provoking a three-plus-year absence from the ring and serving as a lightning rod during the height of the civil rights era. 
 
 “It’s hard for people 50 or younger to realize what this country was like in the 1950s and ‘60s, how bad it was for African-Americans in this country – how they fought just to eat at a lunch counter or stay at a hotel,” Arum said. “There was no opportunity. 
 
 “Ali spoke out against that in a way that really connected with people, even more than the melodic and philosophical way that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out. Because Ali was a great sportsman and boxer, he was able to reach people and, I think, had a tremendous effect on bringing change to this country.” 
 
 No act was more principled than giving up massive boxing purses to defy the draft, Arum said. 
 
 “Once people saw that he sacrificed his livelihood for what he believed in, that really elevated him in the minds of people to be almost saint-like,” Arum said. “Everybody, myself included, counseled him not to take that step that led him to not fight for three and a half years, but he felt he was doing the right thing. And it ended up that it was the right thing – for him, the world and the country.” 
 
 Ali proceeded to return to the ring against Joe Frazier in an epic 1971 showdown, then recaptured the heavyweight belt by knocking out Foreman in 1974 in Africa. Ali quickly avenged a 1978 loss to Leon Spinks for the third union with the belt. 
 
 “His story and his character and his life will be part of history that will be studied by whoever looks back on the last 50 years,” said Arum, who promoted 26 Ali bouts, including the 1975 trilogy capping “Thrilla in Manila” fight with Frazier that is seen as the beginning of the brain damage that plagued his later life. 
 
 Foreman remembers learning a few lessons inside and outside the ring from Ali. 
 
 "Back in the time that Joe Frazier, Ali and I were going strong, they called us all great fighters. There's no question the greatest of all was Muhammad Ali," Foreman said Friday night. "I never had any animosity toward him. Never. I always respected him and I learned from him." 
 
 Foreman said what he learned most was how to get along with reporters and to be more clever in the ring -- an asset that allowed Foreman to recapture a heavyweight belt 20 years after the "Rumble in the Jungle." 
 
 Oscar De La Hoya, who fought in front of Ali sitting ringside in the first bout at Staples Center in 2000, said in a prepared statement, "Muhammad Ali is ... the fighter who ushered in the golden era of boxing and put the sport on the map. He paved the way for professional fighters including myself, elevating boxing to become a sport watched in millions of households around the world. 
 
 "Ali's talent was undeniable ... beyond his incredible talent, he also made boxing interesting. Ali was fearless in the ring, and took on the toughest, most challenging opponents. Ali exemplified courage -- he never took the easy route, something to be admired in and outside of the ring. 
 
 "Let us remember a man who pursued greatness in everything he did and be inspired to hold ourselves to that same standard. Rest in peace, my friend." 
 
 Former champion boxer Manny Pacquiao weighed in from the Philippines. 
 
 “We lost a giant today,” said Pacquiao, who was inspired by Ali’s devotion to the public and was recently elected to a Senate seat in his country. “Boxing benefited from Muhammad Ali's talents, but not nearly as much as mankind benefited from his humanity. Our hearts and prayers go out to the Ali family. May God bless them.” 
 
 Arum witnessed Ali’s standing as the most well-known person in the world when he accompanied the then-retired icon to China to promote a boxing show in the early 1990s, after the country banned the sport during Ali’s reign. 
 
 “Going through customs, there were these massive groups of Chinese that recognized him and went crazy. I was stunned,” Arum said. “He was a magical person and obviously the most amazing person I’ve had the privilege of being around in my lifetime.” 
 
 Lance.pugmire@latimes.com 
 
 Twitter: @latimespugmire ||||| CLOSE Oscar de la Hoya, Bernard Hopkins and other boxers repeat quotes from Muhammad Ali. USA TODAY Sports 
 
 Muhammad Ali is considered to be one of the best boxers of all-time. (Photo: Paul Hawthorne, Getty Images) 
 
 Muhammad Ali, considered to be the greatest heavyweight boxer, died late Friday night in a Phoenix-area hospital at 74 years old. 
 
 Here is a list of some of his best quotes (in no particular order): 
 
 1. "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. His hands can't hit what his eyes can't see. Now you see me, now you don't. George thinks he will, but I know he won't. 
 
 2. "Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth." 
 
 3. "I'm young; I'm handsome; I'm fast. I can't possibly be beat." 
 
 4. "Don’t count the days; make the days count." 
 
 5. “If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it—then I can achieve it." Jesse Jackson said this as early as 1983, according to the Associated Press, and Ali used it in his 2004 book. 
 
 6. “It's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am." 
 
 7. “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” 
 
 8. “If you even dream of beating me you'd better wake up and apologize.” 
 
 9. “Braggin' is when a person says something and can’t do it. I do what I say.” 
 
 10. "I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was." 
 
 11. "Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even." 
 
 12. "I'm so mean, I make medicine sick." 
 
 13. "I should be a postage stamp. That's the only way I'll ever get licked." 
 
 14. “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” 
 
 15. “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” 
 
 16. "A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” 
 
 17. “If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.” 
 
 18. "I shook up the world. Me! Whee!" 
 
 19. “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'” 
 
 20. “At home I am a nice guy: but I don’t want the world to know. Humble people, I’ve found, don’t get very far.” 
 
 21. "A man who has no imagination has no wings." 
 
 22. "He’s (Sonny Liston) too ugly to be the world champ. The world champ should be pretty like me!" 
 
 23. "I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I'm in a world of my own." 
 
 24. “I’ve wrestled with alligators. I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning. And throw thunder in jail.” 
 
 25. "Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong." 
 
 “How tall are you? So I can know in advance how far to step back when you fall down!” #MuhammadAlipic.twitter.com/8rrmqL1fUP — Muhammad Ali (@MuhammadAli) April 6, 2016 
 
 26. “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.” 
 
 27. "I'm the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren't no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn't know about them." 
 
 28. "It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up." 
 
 29. “I’m not the greatest, I’m the double greatest.” 
 
 30. “Live everyday as if it were your last because someday you're going to be right.” ||||| By BUDD SCHULBERG 
 
 KING OF THE WORLD 
 
 Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero. 
 
 By David Remnick. 
 
 Illustrated. 326 pp. 
 
 New York: 
 
 Random House. $25. 
 
 
 
 n this reviewer's library are no fewer than 16 books on the singular life, boxing career and now spiritual journey of the once-brash Louisville amateur whose motormouth equaled the speed of his gloved hands and booted feet, and whose mind -- before he was even in his teens -- was aflame with his dreams of glory. How does one respond to a 12-year-old who wins a split decision in a dinky hometown ring and already pronounces himself the Greatest? 
 
 Muhammad Ali is our black Paul Bunyan, except that Bunyan's superhuman exploits were fables and Ali's are real. He is not merely our most famous heavyweight champion; indeed, with all respect to Joe Louis, Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson, the most venerated of our celebrated athletes, he managed to reach a level of global idolization in a manner that can only be described as transcendental. Who could have predicted in the late 1960's, when Muhammad Ali was reviled by the sporting press and most of white America as a black racist, a mouthy troublemaker, that he would be the obvious choice to light the torch at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, as a symbol of international understanding, peace and love? What would all the name-callers be thinking now, we wondered, as the puffy-faced, middle-aged icon stood there with torch held high in that famous right hand that delivered some of the most punishing right crosses of the 20th century? 
 
 Following his auspicious debut as the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning ''Lenin's Tomb,'' in ''King of the World'' David Remnick brings to his reading of the Ali scriptures a helpful sense of recent boxing history, inseparable from political history; since all champions after the 1950's were black, their lives reflected the social forces at work on them. By choosing to focus on Ali's two predecessors as champions, first Floyd Patterson, then Sonny Liston, the author nicely sets the scene for the impact the Greatest would make when he was ready to shove them aside to take center stage. 
 
 In a discerning and sensitive portrait, Floyd Patterson -- surely the most unlikely man ever to wear the crown -- is the good Negro, an approachable and strangely fearful man, a deferential champion of civil rights, integration and Christian decency. So anxious about losing was Patterson in his first fight with the stone-faced Sonny Liston that he brought a disguise to the dressing room to escape incognito from his anticipated humiliation. ''He was champion in the sense that Chester A. Arthur had been President,'' Remnick sums up in a particularly felicitous phrase. Some other beauts: Patterson's haunted mentor, Cus D'Amato, is ''a cross between the Emperor Hadrian and Jimmy Cagney'' (''a 10!'' this reader scribbled in the margin) and, a few pages later, ''the only modern psychoanalyst who carried a spit bucket in his hand and a Q-Tip in his teeth.'' 
 
 If Patterson was, in Norman Mailer's words, ''a liberal's liberal,'' the tamed Negro literally reformed in reform school, passive, polite and nice, Sonny Liston was the perfect counterweight, the big, bad, black stereotype in every fearful white man's nightmare. One of a dozen children, Liston progressed from overgrown 10-year-old petty thief to knee-breaker for the St. Louis teamsters and the mob that owned them as naturally as a white middle-class child moves up from elementary school to junior high. It was the only possible career move for this precociously physical muscle boy who couldn't read or write but could knock opponents down with a left jab and cripple them with jaw-breaking rights. By the end of the 1950's Liston was ready for the big time, which meant he was afforded the opportunity to turn over virtually 100 percent of his future earnings to Mr. Gray, otherwise known as Frankie Carbo, acknowledged commissioner of boxing without portfolio. But who needs a portfolio if you run the fight game for the Lucchese family? 
 
 ith racy scholarship, Remnick traces what would seem an unlikely liaison between Mr. Gray (or Mr. Fury, as he was sometimes called) and James Norris, head of the International Boxing Commission and heir to a grain and real estate fortune worth hundreds of millions. Madison Square Garden and the top fighters in every division were in their pocket, and this odd couple controlled the fight game until the Feds finally caught up with Mr. Gray (while Mr. Norris, as befitted a scion of Chicago society, was exonerated). But, as Remnick concludes, ''through one false front or another, with a succession of ostensible managers, Liston never moved far from the shade of Frankie Carbo.'' How could he? He knew no other world. In a defining moment that Remnick makes poignant, Liston flies back to Philadelphia after he takes the championship away from Patterson, expecting a triumphant welcome -- and nobody shows up. The story of his life. Deep into this carefully written book, Remnick quotes the cynically literate fight promoter Hal Conrad, who knew Lucky Luciano as well as he did Floyd, Cassius and Sonny. His chilling epitaph for Liston: He died the day he was born. 
 
 Like a good playwright setting up the entrance of his hero in Act 2, Remnick gives us Floyd the Good (Victim No. 1) and Sonny the Bad (Victim No. 2) to prepare us for Cassius the Baaad, the upstart champion young blacks and their white hippie allies could relate to. Born in still-segregated Louisville, ''wounded by the accumulated slights of midcentury American apartheid,'' lying in his bed at night crying ''as he wondered why his race had to suffer so,'' young Cassius was on his way to becoming the symbol of a different kind of black man, whose role model was neither Booker T. Washington nor Martin Luther King. Malcolm X was more like it. 
 
 
 
 The Associated Press Cassius Clay fighting Sonny Liston, February 24, 1964. 
 
 Photo Gallery:Muhammad Ali, Pictures from the Archives of the New York Times, 1960-1998(10 photos) Just as Ali created a new style of heavyweight boxing, ''on the principle that a big man could borrow the tactics of a smaller man,'' a man like Sugar Ray Robinson, he created a new style of black man who went on to shock the world with a challenge both divisive and unifying. With Hegelian logic, in time there would be a synthesis, but when in the mid-60's Cassius Clay embraced Elijah Muhammad's black separatist Nation of Islam, his ''I don't have to be what you want me to be'' spoke to the white power structure in a way it had never been spoken to before. While Ali's conversion came as a surprise to fight fans and to the public at large, one of the most effective chapters in this book, ''Secrets,'' traces the teen-age Clay's attraction to the Black Muslims well before he won the gold medal in the 1960 Olympics. It was the increasingly bitter confrontation between pro- and anti-Vietnam War factions that moved the young black champion from the sports pages to the front pages. Teen-agers in Watts wore his famous face on their buttons, and the ''Don't tread on me'' of black rebellion became ''The Cong don't call me nigger.'' 
 
 If Remnick has not come up with new material for ''King of the World'' -- no small task after a score of books on the subject -- he's drawn wisely from that body of work to define the arc of Ali's ascendancy from superconfident adolescent to Islam-inspired but ecumenical spiritual ambassador (only Ali was multidimensional: he could reach out to the world like Mother Teresa, but as they say in Gleason's Gym, she couldn't lick Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman). 
 
 Remnick -- who broke in as a sportswriter at The Washington Post and is now editor of The New Yorker -- explores the difference between the civil rights movement, founded on democratic principles, and the self-sufficient, fiercely independent Black Is Beautiful movement that caught fire with Ali, captured the imagination of his generation and gave him the courage to refuse the draft, thereby sacrificing his precious championship, facing the prospect of five years in jail and, while appealing his case on the grounds of conscientious objection, being deprived of the license without which he could not ply his trade. The cost to Ali in dollars was in the millions. But there were rewards. From Bertrand Russell came this message of encouragement: ''In the coming months there is no doubt that the men who rule Washington will try to damage you in every way open to them, but I am sure you know that you spoke for your people and for the oppressed everywhere in the courageous defiance of American power. . . . You have my wholehearted support. Call me when you get to England.'' As Remnick quotes the poet Sonia Sanchez: ''It's hard now to relay the emotion of that time . . . when hardly any well-known people were resisting the draft. It was a war that was disproportionately killing young black brothers, and here was this beautiful, funny, poetical young man standing up and saying no!'' 
 
 How Ali finally won vindication in the Supreme Court of the United States, 8-zip, how he came back to the ring slower and inevitably more hittable but winning his title back again, and how after the tide turned against our Vietnam misadventure the unpatriotic sinner of the 60's each year grew in stature as a man of honor and respect -- maybe only a prophet could have foreseen these events. As Remnick ties it all together in ''King of the World,'' building on all those books and articles and transcripts, along with personal interviews, it doesn't read like the case history of a man (although the man is here in living colors, sometimes funny as hell) but of a comic and cosmic superman who accepts the mission of standing up for Mohammed, Allah and the human race. 
 
 While Remnick's firsthand description of Ali's current physical condition is disturbing -- not least, as he notes, ''because it is an accelerated form of what we all fear, the progression of aging, the unpredictability and danger of life'' -- his (our) Ali is ''an American myth who has come to mean many things to many people: a symbol of faith, a symbol of conviction and defiance, a symbol of beauty and skill and courage, a symbol of racial pride, of wit and love.'' That's a lot of symbols for one man. But if ever there was a mighty army of men fused into one, it's the young Cassius Clay self-created as Muhammad Ali. If Sonny Liston died the day he was born, here's a fine book to remind us again that Ali was born with a gift for living (and believing) in a world without end. 
 
 Budd Schulberg's books on boxing include ''Sparring With Hemingway,'' ''Loser and Still Champion: Muhammad Ali'' and a novel, ''The Harder They Fall.'' ||||| Story highlights Mayor calls him the "quintessential" Philly boxer 
 
 Frazier was "swarming and unrelenting," columnist says 
 
 Frazier was diagnosed with liver cancer only recently 
 
 Muhammad Ali says "the world has lost a great champion" 
 
 Joe Frazier, the hard-hitting boxing heavyweight who handed the legendary Muhammad Ali his first defeat, died Monday, just a month after being diagnosed with liver cancer, his family said in a statement. 
 
 The former heavyweight champion, who was 67, became a legend in his own right and personified the gritty working-class style of his hard-knuckled hometown, Philadelphia -- a fitting setting for the "Rocky" film series, starring Sylvester Stallone as hardscrabble boxer Rocky Balboa. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter called Frazier the "quintessential Philadelphia boxer." 
 
 "You could hear him coming, snorting and grunting and puffing, like a steam engine climbing a steep grade," Bill Lyon wrote in a Philadelphia Inquirer column about Frazier, nicknamed Smokin' Joe. 
 
 "He was swarming and unrelenting, and he prided himself that he never took a backward step, and he reduced the Sweet Science to this brutal bit of elemental math: 'I'll let you hit me five times if you'll let me hit you just once.'" 
 
 Frazier's family issued a brief statement about his death. 
 
 "We The Family of ... Smokin' Joe Frazier, regret to inform you of his passing," the statement said. "He transitioned from this life as 'One of God's Men,' on the eve of November 7, 2011 at his home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania." 
 
 Muhammad Ali said in a statement that the "world has lost a great champion." 
 
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 "I will always remember Joe with respect and admiration. My sympathy goes out to his family and loved ones," Ali's statement said. 
 
 Star boxer Floyd "Money" Mayweather offered to pay for Frazier's funeral. 
 
 "My condolences go out to the family of the late great Joe Frazier," read a post on Mayweather's official Twitter feed. "#TheMoneyTeam will pay for his funeral services." 
 
 Fans and well-wishers were encouraged to post their thoughts and prayers on a Facebook page at joefrazierscorner.com. 
 
 "RIP Smokin' Joe Frazier you had heavy hands and a big heart you will be missed," read a Facebook post . 
 
 Another post said: "One of my childhood heroes has left us ...I'm really sad." 
 
 The son of a South Carolina sharecropper, Frazier boxed during the glory days of the heavyweight division, going up against greats George Foreman, Oscar Bonavena, Joe Bugner and Jimmy Ellis. 
 
 He made his name by winning a gold medal for the United States at the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo. U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun said Frazier was "one of the greatest boxers of all time" and "was an Olympic champion and an American icon." 
 
 Frazier used his devastating left hook with impunity during his professional career, retiring in 1976 with a 32-4-1 record and staging one last comeback fight in 1981. 
 
 HBO analyst and famed trainer Emanuel Steward, who knew Frazier from amateur boxing, told boxer Buster Mathis not to fight Frazier as a pro. 
 
 "And in 1968, they did, and Joe Frazier's determination and strength and pressure -- and that wicked left hook -- he broke Buster down and knocked him out," Steward said. "He was one of the most vicious machines I ever saw in my life. 
 
 But it was his three much-hyped fights against Ali that helped seal his legend. 
 
 Frazier bested Ali at 1971's "Fight of the Century" at Madison Square Garden. In the 15th round, Frazier landed perhaps the most famous left hook in history, catching Ali on the jaw and dropping the former champ for a four-count, according to Frazier's bio at the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Frazier left the ring as the undisputed champ and handed Ali his first professional loss. 
 
 "Ali was talking to him and Joe never did bow down. Ali would make a comment and Joe would talk right back. He always had that determination," Steward said. 
 
 Ali won a 12-round decision in a January 1974 rematch, setting the stage for the classic "Thrilla in Manila" just outside the Philippine capital in 1975. 
 
 Ali took the early rounds, but Frazier rebounded before losing the last five rounds. By the end of the 14th, Frazier's eyes were nearly swollen shut, and his corner stopped the bout, according to the biography. 
 
 Later, Ali said, "It was the closest I've come to death." 
 
 Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stan Hochman noted that Frazier "summoned the skill and courage to battle Ali into the 14th round in Manila." 
 
 "He was a fighter, pure and simple, with a style that seemed destined for a short career. Trudge forward, lean on the other guy, take two to land one," Hochman wrote. 
 
 "'You've gotta breathe on him,'" Frazier would say, in a rare attempt to define his style. 'No shortcuts' was his mantra. There's a lesson there for all of us," Hochman's column said Tuesday. 
 
 Boxer Mike Tyson sent Twitter messages saying the era of Frazier and Ali represented an age of "competitive fighting at the highest level." 
 
 "Each man would not give an inch until they were dead," he said, adding that "it has always been an honor to be compared" to Frazier. 
 
 Frazier, a two-time heavyweight champion for nearly three years until he lost in January 1973 to George Foreman, ran a well-known boxing gym in Philadelphia for years. 
 
 "I don't mind working with the kids," Frazier told CNN's Don Lemon in 2009. "The kids is tomorrow. And if we don't do what we're supposed to do for them now, how are you going (to) expect them to carry on?" 
 
 Asked whether he was similar to Rocky Balboa, Frazier replied, "Sure. I worked at the slaughterhouse. I'm the guy that ran in the streets of Philadelphia." 
 
 Nutter said Frazier "represented the heart and soul of boxing in our great city." 
 
 "In the ring and in the neighborhoods, he carried himself with dignity and courage. He was a true ambassador for our city. I enjoyed him as a fighter, and I really liked him as a person," the mayor said. "The entire city mourns his passing, and we keep him and his family in our prayers."
– Muhammad Ali died Friday at the age of 74, likely from complications related to Parkinson's disease. The death of the Greatest led to an outpouring of tributes and memorials from those who knew him and others who admired him from afar. Here are 13 of those reactions from athletes, celebrities, and politicians: “It's been said it was Rope a dope, Ali beat me with no his beauty that beat me. Most beauty I've know loved him," George Foreman tweeted. “Thinking of #MuhammadAli and remembering a man who was not afraid to take a stand and who was committed to being his authentic self," Billie Jean King tweeted. "Ali shook up the world—and the world is better for it," the BBC quotes President Obama as saying in a statement. “The greatest man I have ever known," Billy Crystal tweeted. “The Greatest made the world a better place. His work is done. We are better for it," Carl Weathers tweeted. "Ali exemplified courage—he never took the easy route, something to be admired in and outside of the ring," the Los Angeles Times quotes Oscar De La Hoya as saying. “Boxing benefited from Muhammad Ali's talents, but not nearly as much as mankind benefited from his humanity," the Times quotes Manny Pacquiao as saying. “His may be the Greatest of 20th century American stories," Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted. “We will NEVER forget your courage, standing up to those in power. You gave up your title & your career rather than kill Vietnamese," Michael Moore tweeted. "From the day he claimed the Olympic gold medal in 1960, boxing fans across the world knew they were seeing a blend of beauty and grace, speed and strength that may never be matched again," ABC News quotes a statement from Bill and Hillary Clinton as saying. “Muhammad Ali was the greatest, not only an extraordinary athlete but a man of great courage and humanity," ABC quotes Bernie Sanders as saying in a statement. “Muhammad Ali is dead at 74! A truly great champion and a wonderful guy. He will be missed by all!” Donald Trump tweeted. “God came for his champion. So long great one," Mike Tyson tweeted. (Click here for the best quotes from Ali himself.)