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65 today, one of the few sportsmen who truly deserves to be called a legend.
He made boxing look like an art form at times.

More than a legend. A hero!

An icon indeed but nowhere near the greatest heavyweight ever let alone boxer.

It was as much his wit and charm that won him huge applause and rightly so.

I remember when Henry Cooper floored him and have it on video ,and there is no doubt he was saved by the bell, where as today the count would continue after the bell and Henry would have won.

In addition to that, Ali's trainer, Angelo Dundee, who could see that his fighter was only semi-conscious and would likely have been knocked out at the start of the following round, cut one of Ali's gloves with a razor, thus necessitating a replacement, which gave Ali several more minutes to recover.

This is absolutly true, I heard Angelo tell the story himself.
But he was still the best heavyweight of all time; people forget he was in his prime when he was out of boxing for refusing to be drafted. He was physically going downhill when he returned, but he still could whup everybody around.

I don't think Ali really needed 2 minutes to recover. Joe Frazier hit him with the greatest left hook ever delivered and he'd cleared his head within 5 seconds. As anyone who saw him fight Foreman or Frazier or Shavers he could fight almost as well when he was half-unconscious as he could conscious.

A head punch can be absorbed quite quickly such as the one Smokin' Joe threw, However, Our 'Enery banged Cassius (as he was then) with a jaw punch, and believe me, they take an age to recover from compared to a shot to the head.

What is amazing to me is the(too long ) length of his career, going fom people like Liston & Cooper to Terrell & Spinks.
I had a classmate long ago who had met Ali, & he said the thing that really impressed him was how big he was, & this guy himself was no munchkin.

I met Larry Holmes a few years ago doing the rounds speaking at hotels and signing gloves etc. Now, he's listed at 6'4" and you could have fooled me!! He looked 6'8" at the very least and his hands were like shovels and when he posed with a clenched fist, they resembled a bunch of bananas.
I KNOW George Foreman is a giant of a man as well.