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50 free Muhammad Ali trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Muhammad Ali called himself the Greatest before he had done much to prove it, then spent twenty years proving it, and this quiz follows the whole arc. It starts in Louisville with a stolen bicycle and a policeman's gym, goes to Rome for the 1960 gold medal and the river he may or may not have thrown it in, and then to Miami Beach, where a 22-year-old underdog made Sonny Liston quit on his stool. The name change, Howard Cosell, the 'What's my name?' beating of Ernie Terrell and the record crowd in the Astrodome follow. The centre of the quiz is the exile: the draft refusal, the 21-minute jury, three and a half years without a licence and the unanimous Supreme Court reversal. Then the great trilogy with Frazier, the jaw Ken Norton broke, Deer Lake, Zaire and the rope-a-dope, Don King's 4 a.m. start, the Bayonne Bleeder who inspired Rocky, Manila, the draw with a wrestler in Tokyo, Leon Spinks, the sad night against Holmes and the last fight in the Bahamas. It closes with Parkinson's, the Atlanta torch, the Iraq hostages, the wall-mounted Walk of Fame star, Laila, Will Smith and the DC comic in which he boxed Superman. Easy questions suit anyone who knows the name; the expert tier reaches Trevor Berbick, Deer Lake and the Collision in Korea. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Ali and his fights, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under what name was Muhammad Ali born on January 17, 1942?
Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.
His father was named after a 19th-century Kentucky abolitionist politician of the same name.
Q 02In which city was Muhammad Ali born and raised?
Louisville, Kentucky
The city's main airport was renamed Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in 2019.
Q 03What childhood incident led the 12-year-old Ali to a boxing gym run by police officer Joe Martin?
His bicycle was stolen
Fuming over the theft, he told Martin he wanted to whip the thief; Martin suggested he learn to fight first.
Q 04At the 1960 Rome Olympics, the 18-year-old Clay won gold in which division?
Light heavyweight
He turned professional later the same year, with an amateur record of 100 wins and 8 losses.
Q 05What did Ali claim in his 1975 autobiography he did with his Olympic gold after a whites-only restaurant snub?
Threw it into the Ohio River
Friends including Bundini Brown later disputed the tale; a biographer says he simply lost the medal a year after winning it.
Q 06Who was Ali's trainer for almost his entire professional career, from 1960 to 1981?
Angelo Dundee
Clay had first met him in 1957 as an amateur, and hired him after leaving Archie Moore's camp over a refusal to do chores.
Q 07Which champion did the 22-year-old Clay upset for the heavyweight title in Miami Beach in 1964?
Sonny Liston
He went in as an 8-to-1 underdog and had dubbed the champion 'the big ugly bear'.
Q 08How did the first Clay–Liston title fight end?
The champion quit on his stool before round seven
Late in the fight a temporarily blinded Clay begged Dundee to cut off his gloves; the trainer refused.
Q 09What did the press call the barely visible first-round blow that floored Liston in the 1965 Lewiston rematch?
The phantom punch
Referee Jersey Joe Walcott botched the count, and Neil Leifer's photo of Ali standing over Liston became one of sport's most famous images.
Q 10What interim name did the new champion adopt after the first Liston fight, before settling on Muhammad Ali?
Cassius X
He denounced Clay as a 'slave name' upon joining the Nation of Islam.
Q 11Which broadcaster was one of the very few journalists to accept and use the name Muhammad Ali right away?
Howard Cosell
The pair's combative on-air chemistry became a fixture of 1960s and 70s television.
Q 12Which 1967 opponent did Ali taunt with 'What's my name?' for insisting on calling him Clay?
Ernie Terrell
Ali won a unanimous 15-round decision; the opponent claimed Ali had deliberately thumbed him in the eye.
Q 13Ali's 1966 fight against Cleveland Williams drew a record indoor crowd of 35,460 at which venue?
The Houston Astrodome
Williams had been shot by a Texas policeman two years earlier and lost a kidney.
Q 21The Rumble in the Jungle on October 30, 1974, took place in which country?
Zaire
President Mobutu Sese Seko was persuaded that the publicity would help his regime; the country is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Q 22What tactic, later nicknamed the 'rope-a-dope', did Ali use to beat George Foreman in Kinshasa?
Leaning on the ropes and letting his opponent punch himself out
Writer George Plimpton, at ringside, thought the fight had to be fixed; Foreman was knocked out in the eighth round.
Q 23Why was the Rumble in the Jungle postponed by five weeks?
Q 14In 1967 Ali was stripped of his titles and banned from boxing after refusing to do what?
Be drafted into the US Army
He was convicted of draft evasion after a jury deliberated for just 21 minutes.
Q 15By what margin did the US Supreme Court overturn Ali's draft-evasion conviction in June 1971?
8–0
Thurgood Marshall recused himself, having been Solicitor General at the time of the conviction.
Q 16How long was Ali kept out of the ring during his exile over the draft?
From March 1967 to October 1970
Dundee said he was 'robbed of his best years, his prime years'.
Q 17Who beat Ali by unanimous decision in the March 1971 'Fight of the Century'?
Joe Frazier
It was Ali's first professional defeat; a 15th-round left hook put him on the canvas.
Q 18Where was the Fight of the Century held?
Madison Square Garden
Frank Sinatra, unable to get a ringside seat, took photographs for Life magazine instead.
Q 19Which boxer broke Ali's jaw in their first fight in 1973 and handed him the second loss of his career?
Ken Norton
Ali wore a 'People's Choice' robe given to him by Elvis Presley for that bout.
Q 20From 1972 until the end of his career, Ali trained at a camp he built in which Pennsylvania village?
Deer Lake
He carved it out of a five-acre site on a country road after finding the countryside near Reading to his liking.
Foreman was cut in sparring
An accidental elbow from sparring partner Bill McMurray needed 11 stitches; the three-night music festival went ahead anyway.
Q 24Which promoter staged the Rumble in the Jungle, first billed 'From Slaveship to Championship'?
Don King
The fight was scheduled for 4 a.m. local time so it could air live at 10 p.m. on the US East Coast.
Q 25Which 1996 documentary about the Rumble in the Jungle won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature?
When We Were Kings
It sat unfinished for over two decades before its release.
Q 26Ali's 1975 fight against journeyman Chuck Wepner, 'the Bayonne Bleeder', inspired which film?
Rocky
Wepner floored Ali in the ninth round; Ali said he had tripped on Wepner's foot.
Q 27How did the Thrilla in Manila end on October 1, 1975?
Frazier's corner stopped it after 14 rounds
Trainer Eddie Futch would not let his near-blind fighter come out for the last round; Ali called it the closest thing to dying he knew.
Q 28What insulting animal nickname did Ali give his opponent before the Thrilla in Manila?
The Gorilla
He chanted a rhyme about it while punching a toy gorilla; the bitterness on the other side lasted for decades.
Q 29Ali fought a 15-round draw under special rules in Tokyo in 1976 against which wrestler?
Antonio Inoki
The wrestler spent most of the bout on his back kicking Ali's legs, 107 times; the fight is seen as a forerunner of MMA.
Q 30Ali lost his title in February 1978 to which Olympic champion who had only seven professional fights?
Leon Spinks
Ali won the rematch that September at the New Orleans Superdome, becoming the first three-time lineal heavyweight champion.