'The Greatest' Muhammad Ali (1942-2016) in numbers

198 arm reach in centimetres (78 inches)

191 height in centimetres (6 feet 3 inches)

74 age

61 professional boxing fights

56 wins

37 wins by knockout (25 technical knockouts and 12 knockouts)

31 consecutive wins (winning streak) before being beaten by Joe Frazier in 1971

21 years of professional boxing

12 age when he commenced boxing training

18 age he won his first fight and an Olympic Gold Medal

3 world heavyweight boxing titles

5 losses

1 Gold Medal in light-heavyweight boxing (as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.) at the Rome1960 Olympic Games defeating Poland’s Zbigniew ‘Ziggy’ Pietrzykowski

Image: Painting of Muhammad Ali by John Stango (2013).

Image: Photograph of Prince and Muhammad Ali (June 1997, Washington DC), media photo by Hana Ali.

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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