HIROSHIMA, JAPAN - MAY 27: U.S. President Barack Obama gives a speech during his visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on May 27, 2016 in Hiroshima, Japan. It is the first time U.S. President makes an official visit to Hiroshima, the site where the atomic bomb was dropped in the end of World War II on August 6, 1945. (Photo by Atsushi Tomura/Getty Images)
President Barack Obama joined millions of Americans in paying tribute to the late Muhammad Ali on Saturday, as he and first lady Michelle Obama released a heartfelt statement reflecting on Ali's legacy as both a boxing legend and a cultural icon.
The first family wrote that while they're mourning Ali's passing, they are grateful for being fortunate enough to have known him and that we are all fortunate that "The Greatest chose to grace our time."
"Muhammad Ali was The Greatest. Period. If you just asked him, he'd tell you. He'd tell you he was the double greatest; that he'd "handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder into jail."
"But what made The Champ the greatest -- what truly separated him from everyone else -- is that everyone else would tell you pretty much the same thing."
Obama, who said he keeps a pair of Ali's gloves on display in his White House study, recalled how the magnificent heavyweight champ was an inspiration to him.
"In my private study, just off the Oval Office, I keep a pair of his gloves on display, just under that iconic photograph of him -- the young champ, just 22 years old, roaring like a lion over a fallen Sonny Liston. I was too young when it was taken to understand who he was -- still Cassius Clay, already an Olympic Gold Medal winner, yet to set out on a spiritual journey that would lead him to his Muslim faith, exile him at the peak of his power, and set the stage for his return to greatness with a name as familiar to the downtrodden in the slums of Southeast Asia and the villages of Africa as it was to cheering crowds in Madison Square Garden.
"'I am America,' he once declared. "I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me -- black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me."
"That's the Ali I came to know as I came of age -- not just as skilled a poet on the mic as he was a fighter in the ring, but a man who fought for what was right. A man who fought for us. He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn't. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today."
"He wasn't perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved. But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes -- maybe because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves. Later, as his physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace and reconciliation around the world. We saw a man who said he was so mean he'd make medicine sick reveal a soft spot, visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a torch, and fight his greatest fight of all on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that ravaged his body, but couldn't take the spark from his eyes."
The statement closed with a remarkable sentiment from Obama, who wrote "Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it."
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