At Home With Muhammad Ali

Thomas Hauser authored the definitive Ali biography and draws on his own extensive experience with ‘The Greatest’ as he reviews Hana Ali’s book

MUHAMMAD ALI had four wives. Each was important to him in a different way.

Sonji Roy was his first love. They met on July 3, 1964, four months after Ali dethroned Sonny Liston. Muhammad was 22 years old, one year younger than she was. Sonji was a strikingly sensuous woman who supported herself by working in nightclubs, entering beauty contests, and modelling. Ali married her 41 days after they met.

Ali adored Sonji. They were young and full of hope at a time when the most electrifying years of his life had just begun. He was faithful to her throughout their marriage. But Sonji found herself at odds with the Nation of Islam heirarchy, and that brought their marriage down. They divorced on January 10, 1966.

Once, on a sunny afternoon three decades ago when Ali and I were walking near his home in Berrien Springs, Muhammad told me, “If I go to heaven, I want to be there with Sonji.”

On August 17, 1967, Ali, then 25 years old, married 17-year-old Belinda Boyd. Belinda had been raised in the Nation of Islam. She and Ali had four children together: three daughters (Maryum, Rasheda, and Jamillah) and a son (Muhammad Jnr). They divorced in 1977 after years of womanising on Ali’s part. During their marriage, Ali had three daughters out of wedlock. One of these daughters, Hana (born on August 6, 1976), was the love child of Ali and Veronica Porche who would become his third wife.

Veronica was uncommonly beautiful with an elegance about her. She and Ali met in 1974 when she was an 18-yearold student at USC and entered a beauty contest to choose poster girls for Ali’s upcoming fight against George Foreman in Zaire. Out of 70 entrants, four were chosen to travel around the United States promoting the bout and ultimately to go to Zaire. Veronica was one of them. She and Ali married on June 19, 1977, had a second daughter (Laila, born on December 30, 1977) and divorced nine years later.