Muhammad Ali the Greatest RIP Legend

[Master]

Muhammad Ali: Lennox Lewis and Will Smith to carry coffin at funeral

Britain's former world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis and actor Will Smith will be pallbearers at Muhammad Ali's funeral on Friday.

London-born Lewis, 50, became undisputed world champion in 1999, while American Smith, 47, played Ali in the 2001 film of the same name.

Three-time heavyweight world champion Ali died last Friday at the age of 74 in hospital in Phoenix, Arizona.

His funeral will be held in his home town of Louisville, Kentucky.

"I am humbled, and honoured, beyond words to help see my hero, Muhammad Ali, off to his final resting place," said Lewis, in a statement.

"Ali has always been an enormous inspiration to me, not only in my boxing career, but also in life. His journey began 74 years ago, and in that time, he not only transformed the world of sport, he used sport to transform the world."

The other pallbearers will be Jerry Ellis, the brother of Jimmy Ellis, Ali's former sparring partner and fellow world heavyweight champion, Ali's cousins John Grady and Jan Wadell, nephew Ibn Ali, former brother-in-law Komawi Ali and family friend John Ramsey.

Friday's service, which will be attended by a number of world leaders, heads of state and celebrities, will be open to the public and streamed live on the internet. It starts at 19:00 BST.

Muhammad Ali: Lennox Lewis and Will Smith to carry coffin at funeral - BBC Sport

[Beanz]

Hugh Mcllvanney a great writer and certainly amongst the best, possibly THE best sports writer said after his defeat at the hands of Joe Frazier

"The world would be uninhabitable if all of us dreamt on the epic scale of Ali, but it would be a considerably drabber place if one among us had not done so"

It is easy to dismiss such things as trite and over sentimental but Mcllvanney himself acknowledged that Ali's own heroic vision of himself was in some ways bizarre. It was validated though when he was able to retain that mystique even after defeat. Ali was not just mouthing platitudes when he spoke of the noble Joe Frazier a great man, a great hitter and later in Manila insisting he didn't want anybody putting Frazier down because he could not have withstood what Joe had that night.

Ali knew he was just a man but he dared to create something bigger with real hard work and substance unlike many of the so called dreamers today.

He was a real man, a real fighter with an unreal ability to take punishment but he first had to put an image into peoples heads a template, an icon that they would remember and he could use in creating and sustaining the mystique of a new kind of fighter, an entertainer that could sting,punish, baffle and frustrate in equal measure. The Williams fight ,it's not his greatest fight because he is not being pushed and tested but as an exercise in creating greatness it's pretty instructive.