I have relatively vivid memories of my father watching boxing matches in the middle of the night, probably not long after we had our first TV, i.e. from circa 1964 onwards.
Update 5 June
The Guardian reports that Barack Obama led tributes to the incandescent athlete, activist, humanitarian, poet and showman with a statement that caught the mood of many. It said:
“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.”
