Ali’s grieving wives
Boxing star’s ex-partners join 14,000 for 2-day funeral
MUHAMMAD Ali’s widow joined two of his former wives yesterday to put aside their differences at the start of his huge two-day public funeral.
His fourth wife Lonnie stood yards away from wife number two, Khalilah Camacho Ali, and his third spouse, Veronica Porche for Muslim prayers in front of 14,000 mourners.
Relations between Lonnie and other family members have been toxic for years over claims that she stopped Ali seeing his only biological son, Muhammad Jr, and sole sibling, his brother Rahman, both of whom were at the service.
His first wife, Sonji Roi, was married to Ali for just over a year from 1964, and died in 2005.
Family members said Ali wanted all his surviving wives to attend his funeral – a wish his oldest child, Maryum, insisted was respected.
The coffin, draped in a black and gold Islamic shroud, was surrounded by a sea of Muslim and non-Muslim mourners as it was escorted by his family at the Jenazah service in his Kentucky hometown of Louisville. Ali, who had Parkinson’s disease for 32 years, died aged 74 in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday after the threetime world heavyweight champion was taken to hospital with breathing problems.
He and his family had spent ten years planning the funeral to make sure it would reflect his Muslim faith and global fame.
His coffin was taken into the Kentucky Exposition Centre next to the Freedom Hall where an 18-year-old Ali – then Cassius Clay – made his professional debut, beating Tunney Hunsaker, a 30-year-old white policeman, in six rounds in October 1960.
Muslim scholar Sherman Jackson told the crowd that Ali, a Muslim convert, ‘did more to normalise Islam in this country than perhaps any other Muslim in the history of the United States’. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and former boxing champions Sugar Ray Leonard and Lennox Lewis were among mourners. Briton Lewis, who will be one of the pallbearers at the funeral today, said: ‘It’s such a privilege and such an honour to be able to send The Greatest and say farewell to him.’
Another of the eight pallbearers will be US actor Will Smith, who played the boxer in the biopic Ali. Former US President Bill Clinton, a long-time friend of Ali’s, was due to give a eulogy at the funeral today.
Some devout members of Ali’s family are reportedly upset that he wasn’t buried within 24 hours in keeping with Islamic custom, and that Lonnie has turned the event into a celebrity-filled ‘festival’.
There was also a growing row over touts who ignored Ali’s wish for a free public memorial by selling tickets for up to £70.