The Postal Service released a stamp earlier this month to honor boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
Here are five facts about the three-time heavyweight champion:
• He started boxing after his bicycle was stolen. A Louisville, KY, police officer, Joe E. Martin, encouraged Ali to try boxing and began training him after the 12-year-old vowed revenge on the thief. At 18, he traveled to Rome for the 1960 Olympics, winning the light heavyweight gold medal. He won his first professional fight later that year.
• He revolutionized boxing style. Ali first captured attention with his dazzling speed and skill. He danced around his opponent using quick footwork — a move that became known as the “Ali Shuffle” — redefining what a heavyweight champion could look like.
• His quotes are legendary. Ali famously proclaimed he would “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee” and “the hands can’t hit what the eyes don’t see” before claiming his first heavyweight title in 1964. Later in his career he joked, “I should be a postage stamp. That’s the only way I’ll ever get licked.”
• He connected with fans through the Postal Service: After being refused an autograph by his boxing idol, Sugar Ray Robinson, as a child, Ali vowed never to deny a request for his signature. Fans wrote to him from around the world, and he spent several hours each day reading and answering letters. Ali faithfully exchanged letters with one Seattle fan for more than three decades.
• He sacrificed his career for his beliefs. In 1967, at the height of his career, Ali was arrested for refusing induction into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, citing his religious beliefs and his opposition to fighting for a country that treated him as a second-class citizen. He was stripped of his title and banned from boxing for more than three years. In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction, but his suspension cost him his prime boxing years and millions of dollars.
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