{"id":3023,"date":"2024-04-18T08:07:46","date_gmt":"2024-04-18T08:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/?p=3023"},"modified":"2024-04-18T08:07:46","modified_gmt":"2024-04-18T08:07:46","slug":"muhammad-alis-longtime-friend-pays-tribute-vu-thuy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/muhammad-alis-longtime-friend-pays-tribute-vu-thuy\/","title":{"rendered":"Muh\u0430mm\u0430d Al\u0456\u2019\u0455 longt\u0456me fr\u0456end \u0440\u0430y\u0455 tr\u0456bute"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thousands of mourners will pay final respects to Muhammad Ali on Thursday and Friday. Among those flocking to funerals in the Champ\u2019s hometown of Louisville, Ky., will be former Post writer and longtime Ali insider Michael Marley.<\/p>\n

\"Muhammad<\/p>\n

A self-described \u201clatchkey kid\u201d from Boston, Marley started an Ali fan club in 1961. Three years later, he tracked the champ down at the Statler Hilton.<\/p>\n

Marley tells The Post\u2019s Michael Kaplan: \u201cI was 12 years old, had been stalking Ali by mail and got him on the phone in his hotel room. He asked if I was white or colored. I told him, \u2018I\u2019m colored white.\u2019 He laughed and said, \u2018You\u2019re funny, kid.\u2019 I snuck out of seventh grade the next day and met Ali with Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. Then, a few months later, I was with him in his dressing room for the famous one-punch knockout of Sonny Liston\u201d \u2014 which took a mere 90 seconds.<\/p>\n

\"Bill<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody, except for Ali, was shocked by the knockout,\u201d Marley recalls.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Marley was brought in as the youngest member of Ali\u2019s 60-person entourage. \u201cHe had one guy driving girls in from the airport and another one driving them back out. He had a witch doctor who came up with \u2018Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.\u2019\u201d He remembers watching exploitation films with the boxer at a Times Square grindhouse, listening to the Rolling Stones and shooting baskets in an empty Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe threw nothing but air balls,\u201d says Marley. \u201cAli was a horrible athlete but the world\u2019s greatest boxer.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thousands of mourners will pay final respects to Muhammad Ali on Thursday and Friday. Among those flocking to funerals in the Champ\u2019s hometown of Louisville, Ky., will… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3025,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023\/revisions\/3025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbiz.thongtinluat.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}