Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight Was Against Parkinson’s Disease

He showed the world what it was like to have the disease and live with grace.

Throughout his remarkable life, boxing legend Muhammad Ali strongly defended black dignity, the anti-war movement and his own athletic prowess with his bold, boastful and fast-talking charm.
But in the last chapters of his life, when Parkinson’s disease began to slowly conquer more and more of his powerful body, it was Ali’s mere physical presence that spoke volumes about his final cause: awareness, research and advocacy for Parkinson’s disease, a condition that directly affects about one million Americans every year.
His most public stand for Parkinson’s disease awareness was during the 1996 Olympic Games’ opening ceremony in Atlanta, when he held the Olympic flame aloft and lit the Olympic cauldron, despite his badly shaking arms. But behind the scenes, Ali and his wife, Lonnie, immersed themselves in a life of philanthropy, advocating for Parkinson’s disease patients and their caregivers in addition to doing humanitarian work with the United Nations and other organizations.
To the patients at the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center in Phoenix, Arizona, which Ali helped establish and fund, he was more than just a boxing champion or a cultural icon. Ali was the face of their own struggle against the disease, which has no known cure. In the video below, patients described how Ali’s example inspired them to continue pressing on with therapy and their own self-care in the midst of an ever-progressing disease.
“He’s such a fighter — not just in the ring but in his life"

Sleep on Muhammad

 

 

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