Muhammad Ali's daughter Hana on life with the boxing legend
The daughter of boxing legend Muhammad, Hana Ali, talks to Hannah Stephenson about growing up with her hero father and life since his death from Parkinson’s in 2016
Boxing legend Muhammad Ali remains a hero to millions — and few could hero-worship him more than his daughter, Hana. “I always looked at my father as a hero and it’s nothing to do with the fact that he was famous,” she explains. “As a young girl, I just thought that his choices in life were always right, because he’s chosen by God.
“He survived the Sixties, the Seventies, never getting shot when all of our black leaders were being killed. He walked the streets freely, never had bodyguards. It was a miracle really, if you look at how America was at the time, and how outspoken he was.”
The third-youngest child of the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion (he fathered nine in total) has now written her third book about her father, At Home With Muhammad Ali. It features details drawn from the boxer’s private audio diaries, love letters and journals, as well as Hana’s own memories of growing up in the family home — a Los Angeles mansion, where regular visitors included Michael Jackson, Clint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone.
“I was too young to remember them all, except for Michael Jackson of course. I was a little girl listening to his music. He was just very sweet, very calm, quiet. He moved with soft slow motions. He laughed a lot around my father and was always cracking jokes. I think he saw him as a father figure.”
While Ali made his mark in the boxing ring and on the world stage, Hana and her sister, Laila, were tended to by governesses and nannies in the lap of luxury, but the little girl experienced huge anxieties at his absences.
The 460 pages of the book are awash with stories of his enduring love for his children, his efforts towards peace and his limitless spiritual goodness, never wallowing in self-pity when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1984 and began a slow, debilitating decline until his death in 2016, aged 74.
Hana, now 42, is one of Ali’s two daughters by his third marriage to model Veronica Porche, whom he met in 1974, while in Zaire when Porche was 18 and one of the four poster girls who had promoted the “Rumble in the Jungle” bout against George Foreman. Hana was born in 1976 and her parents married the following year, but the marriage only lasted eight years.
He may have been godly, brave and wise, but Ali was also a womaniser who admitted his sins, but did not, seemingly, try to fight against them.
“I never blamed my father, or judged him, because he was so amazing in so many ways and he never took advantage of, or disrespected, women, in any way.
“He just loved pretty girls and he’s a man and I think a lot of men struggle with that, especially when they’re as famous as he was and have women throwing themselves at them all the time.
“He just didn’t have control over that side of himself. What I respect about that is that when you see a person’s faults, you can know them better when you see how they handle them.
“And my dad never treated people bad, he never, ever denied his children, quite the opposite — he was ready to claim kids that weren’t even his.”
He went on to marry Lonnie Williams; his nine children came from four different relationships. They all remain close, Hana insists, and she quickly dismisses reports that there have been sibling wrangles over inheritance.
“He owned up to his responsibilities and his mistakes and he tried to do right by them. I always thanked him for that. Most men will mess up, hide it and keep affairs in secret, and the kids suffer for it.
“My siblings did not suffer because they were born out of wedlock, or because my father had affairs with their mothers. He brought them around, he respected them.
They were all invited to his funeral. His weakness was he loved women, and being married didn’t keep him from pursuing that.”
While she says her parents never argued, she has blotted out the pain she felt when she found out her mother was leaving her father.
“All of the pain that she received and dealt with through all of the cheating, throughout the years, she kept distancing herself, turning herself off emotionally and away from him.
“So, the love was still there, but it took on a new form and it wasn’t an in-love feeling anymore.”
The divorce affected Hana deeply, especially since it was her psychologist who broke the news that her parents were splitting, when she was around nine years old.
“I would go after school and she asked me one day how I felt about my parents getting divorced. I literally went completely blank. I don’t have any memory from that moment on to Daddy coming to visit me in the next house. It’s all just wiped out, anything in-between. It must have been that painful, because I do not remember any of it.” In the book, while she doesn’t ignore the fact that he was unfaithful, she doesn’t dwell on it either.
He still remained positive when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
“My father was always saying how blessed he was — even in the face of this. He never asked, ‘Why me?’ He always looked at it as ‘Okay’ and that’s just how he was. He was very spiritual and positive. He thought, ‘This is just a punishment on earth so I can have heaven, for all my wrongdoings’.”
Today, Hana still lives in Los Angeles, around a mile from the old family home, driving past the mansion in Fremont Place every day on her way to work as an estate agent. She’s married to mixed martial arts boxer Kevin, but doesn’t have any children.
How has she managed to move on?
“Since my father passed, it’s strange, because I just don’t feel like he’s gone. I don’t know if it’s because he’s so loved, or because his spirit is so strong, or because the love he gave was so strong.”
She has pictures of him all over the house and talks about her father as though he were still alive.
“I just love him so much and I think I feel a little less fearful about passing away. That’s the only major change that I’ve found, other than the fact that I can’t go visit him.
“I just feel a little less fearful knowing he’s over there.
On the other side.”