Featured Image Credit: Getty
Topics: Muhammad Ali, Donald Trump, Boxing
Luke Davies
Former heavyweight world champion boxer Muhammad Ali gave his thoughts on Donald Trump back in the 1990s – and it’s safe to say he wasn’t a fan of the now-U.S. President.
Ali, who died aged 74 in 2016, is widely regarded as one of the best boxers of all time, but he was also known for his single-mindedness when it came to politics.
In April 1967, he refused to be inducted into the American armed forces during the United States’ war with Vietnam.
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As a result, he was convicted of draft evasion, sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000 and banned from boxing for three years – as well as being stripped of his titles.
"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while… people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?" Ali said at the time [quotes via BBC].
"Man, I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.
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"I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over."
Of course, this was almost six decades ago, so what would Ali make of the current U.S. government led by Trump?
Well, the relationship between the pair was a complex one.
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As reported in an article in The Telegraph in 2017, Thomas Hauser, Muhammad Ali’s official biographer, revealed what happened when Trump and Ali attended a dinner in the mid-1990s.
“It was a celebratory dinner where Muhammad was honoured,” said Hauser. “We were sitting at the same table as Donald Trump and halfway through the evening, Muhammad leaned over to me and said of Trump, ‘He’s not as big as he thinks he is’.
“That’s one of many times when Muhammad and my views were right, and it’s too bad the American people didn’t get that message.”
In 2015, Trump put forward a proposal to ban Muslims entering the U.S. - something that was met with widespread backlash including criticism from Ali who said Muslims "have to stand up to those who use Islam to advance their own personal agenda", without naming Trump.
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As reported by the BBC, Ali's words were directed at "presidential candidates proposing to ban Muslim immigration to the United States".