Trump is floored by Ali

PRESIDENT Donald Trump yesterday said he would pardon Muhammad Ali for dodging the Vietnam War draft – only for the boxer’s family to say his conviction had long been overturned.

Ali, who died in 2016, was stripped of the World Heavyweight title and convicted for refusing to join the US Army in 1967. But the Supreme Court cleared him in 1971.

After Mr Trump said he was considering pardons for thousands of convictions, including that of Ali, a lawyer for the boxer’s family said: ‘We appreciate [his] sentiment but … there is no conviction from which a pardon is needed.’