Ferdie Pacheco, Ali’s fight doctor, boxing commentator, 89

Ferdie Pacheco, Muhammad Ali's outspoken "fight doctor" who treated the charismatic heavyweight champion for years before becoming an Emmy-winning boxing commentator and occasional critic of the sport, died Nov. 16 at his home in Miami. He was 89. He had been in declining health after a series of strokes, said his daughter, Tina Pacheco.

Pacheco spent much of his life as a physician in Miami, with an office in the predominantly black Overtown neighborhood and another in the Little Havana community of Cuban exiles.

He also volunteered his medical expertise to boxers trained by the brothers Chris and Angelo Dundee at the fabled 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach. Over the years, Pacheco worked with no fewer than 12 world champions, but none could match the star power of Ali.

They met soon after Ali arrived in Miami in 1960 as a supremely confident and voluble 18-year-old Olympic gold medalist still known as Cassius Clay.

"He was the most magnificent physical specimen I've ever seen," Pacheco told the Sun Sentinel newspaper of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1999.

He spent 15 years in Ali's corner, nursing his injuries, stitching his cuts and – as time went on – voicing increasing concern about the toll boxing was taking on his patient.

Ali won the world heavyweight title in 1964 with a stunning upset of the formidable Sonny Liston. Brash, colorful and controversial, Ali soon became the world's most infamous athlete for refusing to enter the military during the Vietnam War. Through it all, Pacheco was part of the inner circle of what he came to call the "Ali Circus."