A champion who gave up perhaps the best years of his life by taking a stand, a personal stand saying he would not serve in the draft. He would not fight against the communists in vietnam, and he paid the price for that with some of the best years of his life. But he came back and became champion again. Gary radnich is here now. And this is certainly somebody that just transcends sports. And with next time you see an athlete make a prediction, stick out his chest and tell you what hes going to do it all began with ali. His career began in lewisville kentucky where he won an olympic light heavy weight gold medal. And upon his return, he found that racism with a gold medal around his neck or not was still very prevalent in his native lewisville. The story goes he went to a bridge, threw his gold medal into the water never to retrieve it. And it went on to become the heavy weight champion. In the early 60s he was a 71 underdog when he took on sonny lipton and he said im going to beat this
Ali, who died from respiratory disease. Much to the surprise of people who thought he would come home from the hospital. People from kentucky are getting their first chance to remember him. Louisville mayor greg fisher is expected to speak shortly there in louisville, kentucky. This obviously hits them very hard. They consider him to be obviously their Hometown Hero of sorts. He has done so much outside the boxing ring when youre talking about civil rights and about humanitarian causes. And people are certainly recognizing that. I think even more than theyre looking at his success in the boxing ring today. Thats very true. A long history of battles. It has been said that his greatest battle perhaps was the battle against the United States government on the issue of his draft evasion charge that went all the way to the Supreme Court but at the end of the day, his greatest battle most will say was again parkinsons, which he fought for 30 years. Youre looking at a small memorial. We under