By Jeremy Harness

file photo globe-mma.com: Boxing great Muhammad Ali

“The Greatest” was honored in a grand fashion Friday morning.

Thousands of people congregated to Louisville’s West End to pay their last respects to boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who died June 3 at the age of 74 from what was called “septic shock due to unspecified natural causes.”

Louisville residents, celebrities and dignitaries alike were on hand to celebrate the life of the man whom is regarded by many as the greatest fighter of all time, one who not only transcended the sport of boxing, but also that of the entire sports world as well as helping frame American culture as we know it today.

In his eulogy, former president Bill Clinton, for instance, recalled crying “like a baby” when watching Ali carry the Olympic torch at the start of the 1996 games in Atlanta.

Ali’s wife, Lonnie, recalled to the people of the story of a white police officer who helped 12-year-old Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, after the boy had his bike stolen. The officer then guided him into a boxing gym, and the rest was history.

Celebrities such as comedian Billy Crystal also came out to pay their last respects. Crystal was just getting started in his career in 1974 when he said he first met Ali. The two hit it off very well, well enough that he said that Ali began to call him his “little brother.”
Will Smith, who portrayed him in the movie “Ali,” served as a pallbearer along with former heavyweight boxing champions Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson.

“He was not just a Muslim, or a black man, or a Louisville kid,” senior adviser to the president Valerie Jarrett told ABC News. “He wasn’t even just the greatest of all time. He was Muhammad Ali. The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.”

Ali’s body was carried in a cherry-red casket, and as the hearse that carried the casket drove to the site of the memorial service, onlookers chanted and threw flowers onto the vehicle.