Family feuds as Mali’s life slips away

Lonnie has cut off the sporting legend from his family and is “draining” him as his mental and physical faculties are eroded by Parkinson’s disease.

The boxer’s brother lives in poverty in a small flat in his family’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, where Muhammad Ali owns one of his three mansion homes.

He said he and his family had been barred from visiting the three-time heavyweight world champion and could only speak to him on the phone.

“We’ve all been pushed out. The only time I get to see him is at public events,” said Rahman Ali, himself an ex-boxer.

“She and her family are draining him. It’s so sad. There’s nothing I can do, they’ve blocked us all off.”

He said his 71-year-old brother was so crippled by Parkinson’s, the degenerative brain condition that has afflicted many ex-boxers, he might not survive until the summer.

“My brother can’t speak –  he doesn’t recognise me. He’s in a bad way. He’s very sick,” he told a Sunday newspaper.
“It could be months, it could be days.”

Rahman Ali (69), who retired from boxing after suffering several strokes, said he last saw his famous brother in July last year at the Sports for Peace Gala in London.

He said that in the days when his brother could still communicate, he had told him he was not in pain, adding: “I’ve achieved everything I’ve ever wanted to accomplish. Don’t cry for me, I’m in no pain.”

He also claims that his brother, estimated to be worth more than £50 million, told him he had set up a trust fund for him.
But his sister-in-law had “put a stop to it”.

Rahman Ali added that Ali’s nine children were also having trouble getting hold of their father.  He said the closest they get is when Lonnie puts him on the phone, although he is only able to breathe down the line.

“If he knew what was happening and where I’m living now, he’d be as mad as hell, so angry. If he saw what was happening with his children, he’d go crazy,” Rahman Ali said.

The two brothers –  born Cassius and Rudolph Clay –  were the only two children of poor parents, who worked as a billboard painter and a household domestic.

Rahman Ali copied his brother when he changed his name, but his career in boxing was short-lived and he retired in the 1960s.

Muhammad Ali has been married four times. Yolanda “Lonnie” Williams, became wife number four in Louisville in 1986. – Mailonline.