{"id":12949,"date":"2012-02-20T16:22:23","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T21:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=12949"},"modified":"2012-02-20T16:15:34","modified_gmt":"2012-02-20T21:15:34","slug":"pres-obama-to-muhammad-ali-%e2%80%98you-shocked-the-world%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=12949","title":{"rendered":"Pres. Obama To Muhammad Ali: \u2018You Shocked The World\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LAS VEGAS \u2014<strong> President Barack Obama<\/strong> lauded <strong>Muhammad Ali<\/strong> Saturday as he joined some of the country\u2019s most famous people in offering birthday wishes to the boxer known simply as \u201cThe Greatest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHappy birthday, champ,\u201d<strong> Pres. Obama<\/strong> told <strong>Ali<\/strong> through a video message, saying he wished he could have attended a swanky dinner gala in Las Vegas featuring some of the biggest names in sports, film, television and music.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a fighter, you were something spectacular,\u201d <strong>Pres. Obama<\/strong> told <strong>Ali<\/strong>, who turned 70 last month. \u201cYou shocked the world, and you inspired it, too. And even after all the titles and legendary bouts, you\u2019re still doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The gala\u2019s 2,000 attendees were there to celebrate <strong>Ali\u2019s<\/strong> life and generate millions of dollars for brain research, a mission <strong>Ali\u2019s<\/strong> family says is important to him in part because of his nearly 30-year battle with Parkinson\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n<p>A set of gloves <strong>Ali<\/strong> used to defeat <strong>Floyd Patterson<\/strong> in 1965 in Las Vegas \u2014 the first heavyweight title fight in Sin City \u2014 sold for $1.1 million. It came with one of the original posters used to promote the fight, which had <strong>Muhammad Ali\u2019s<\/strong> chosen name as a subscript to <strong>Cassius Clay<\/strong>, the name he was born with. When <strong>Ali<\/strong> converted to Islam, many people resisted calling him by his new name.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ali<\/strong> entered the room and sat at a table with his family before bidding began on the gloves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LAS VEGAS \u2014 President Barack Obama lauded Muhammad Ali Saturday as he joined some of the country\u2019s most famous people in offering birthday wishes to the boxer known simply as \u201cThe Greatest.\u201d \u201cHappy birthday, champ,\u201d Pres. Obama told Ali through a video message, saying he wished he could have attended a swanky dinner gala in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}