Muhammad Ali, one of the most significant athletes who ever lived, passed away Friday night at age 74.
A three-time heavyweight boxing champion, Ali achieved levels of national ubiquity and significance that few athletes have ever reached. As an athlete, he was the face of boxing when the sport was still important, generating the kinds of audiences that no sport outside of the Super Bowl can currently command. As a cultural figure, he was one of the nation’s most controversial figures during the societal tumult of the the 1960s and early 1970, before becoming one of its more beloved during the final decades of his life.
Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1984, and though he remained active in recent years, he was mostly out of the public eye. By the end of his life, he had become so non-controversial as to gain the kind of apolitical, sainted acceptance of a Martin Luther King. Whether that was completely for the good can be subject to debate. Only a few Ali critics remained by the end (at least publicly), still committed to their disdain for his opposition to the Vietnam War.
During his life, Ali was involved in some of sports media’s most iconic moments — from his actual fights to his interviews with Howard Cosell to lighting the Olympic torch in 1996. To cap ESPN’s Images of the Century montage on the final night of 1999, the network ended on the image of Ali towering over Sonny Liston at the end of his 1965 knockout.
Upon Ali’s death, the three major broadcast networks broke in with special reports and the major cable news outlets went into rolling coverage — not insignificant given the news broke after midnight. Some networks brought out their primary anchors, including NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt and MSNBC breaking news anchor Brian Williams. According to TV Newser, ABC’s special report ran a full 20 minutes, with the network running several clips from interviews between Ali and ABC Sports icon Cosell.
ESPN’s SportsCenter went into rolling coverage as well, with the network’s primary breaking news anchors Bob Ley and Jeremy Schaap joining the usual late night hosts, Scott Van Pelt, Neil Everett, Stan Verrett, John Anderson and Steve Levy. From the moment the news broke until 4 AM ET, ESPN aired live, commercial free coverage.
