Daughter says Ali's health is getting worse

Taken from Foxsports website
10/27/05 2 PM EST
http://msn.foxsports.com/boxing/story/5029044

Muhammad Ali appears to be losing his battle with Parkinson’s Disease.

The 63-year-old Ali, who has suffered from the disease for many years, has begun to show signs of decline, his daughter Layla told The Los Angeles Times.
“I feel like the disease is progressing,” she said. "Different things start happening as you get older. I have noticed a change in him, something that goes along with Parkinson’s.

“It’s painful for me because I would love to sit down and talk to my dad about the way he used to be when he was my age, when he was in his prime, because we are so much alike. I can’t really do that. I can’t share a lot of things with him.”

At age 27, Layla is in her sixth year as a professional boxer and has compiled a 21-0 record with 18 knockouts. She says she wants to talk about boxing with the former three-time heavyweight champion.

However, Ali, once one of the most quotable athletes in sports, is now mostly silent.

“We don’t talk about boxing,” she told The Times. "He might come to a fight and say, ‘You’re bad.’ But he was never one to talk much about boxing with us. That was not him. And he doesn’t talk much these days anyway. It takes him too much energy to talk.

Layla, who lives in Los Angeles, said her father feels “like he’s trapped inside his body. He can think. He has things he wants to say, but his lips sometimes just don’t move to get it out,” she said.

“He has his good days and his bad days. He’s taking a lot of different medications. Sometimes, his speech is so slurred, you can’t hardly understand him. But he definitely knows what’s going on. That’s for sure. He sees everything.”

How does her famous father spend his time?

“He’s just taking life easy,” she told The Times. “He likes doing simple things. He loves to draw, he likes to color, he likes to clip pictures out of magazines. And he likes to do magic tricks. It doesn’t take a whole lot to keep him entertained. But his attention span is very short when the subject is something more than that.”

This is definitely a lesson in mortality.

I will cry when Ali dies. I say that unashamedly.

Damn. That’s all I can muster. D-A-M-N.

Poor Muhammad Ali. I’m hoping against hope he’ll somehow get better. :frowning:

Relax, it’s just the Rope-A-Dope.

It is indeed a shame to see Ali as he is today. He would have become Boxing’s elder statesman had he not ended up the way he did.

A sobering reminder of what happens at the end of the road in combat sports.

Lifetime: Ali has parkinson’s. He’s as much a product of “the end of the road in combat sports” as michael J. fox.

It doesn’t matter. He’s immortal, and he’ll stay that way as long as one person remembers him and tries to do what he did.

That’s the advantage of a life lived to the hilt.

He saw the top of the mountain.

I was actually talking more about his difficulties in performing even the simplest things. The pity about the martial arts is that you can do a lot of the stupid shit when you’re younger, and then live to regret it when you’re older and can’t do anything.

Ali’s got parkinson’s, but he’s still a shadow of what he once was, and it’s just an example that even the best fighters in their prime eventually still become helpless. Thats what I meant to say.

man it tears me up when people try to tell me Ali is like that ‘because of all the hits to the head’ is all.

If that is what causes parkinsons, you’d be able to use tex cobb to mix paint.

Ali recently got honored by President GWB for his achievements, gave him the Medal of Freedom and all that.

Well said.

“You must spread some reputation around before giving it to JohnnyCache again”

Sometimes I think you should try and write for a living.

I do infact attempt to write for a living.

It’s hard to butter a pizza with attempts, though.