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Boxing legend Muhammad Ali is close to death in a US hospital, a source close to the family has told the Reuters news agency.
“It’s extraordinarily grave. It’s a matter of hours,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Ali, 74, one of the world’s most celebrated athletes, was hospitalised this week for a respiratory ailment.
Asked about Ali’s condition, the source said: “It’s extraordinarily grave. It’s a matter of hours.”
The source said he had spoken with Ali’s wife, Lonnie.
“It could be more than a couple of hours, but it’s not going to be much more. Funeral arrangements are already being made.”
A spokesman for the former world heavyweight champion, Bob Gunnell, has not responded to repeated requests for comment about Ali’s condition.
Ali has suffered from Parkinson’s disease for more than three decades and has kept a low profile in recent years.
At the height of his career, Ali was known for his dancing feet and quick fists and his ability, as he put it, to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
Nicknamed The Greatest, he retired from boxing in 1981 with a 56-5 record. Ali’s diagnosis of Parkinson’s came about three years after he retired.
Ali, born in Louisville, Kentucky, as Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr, changed his name in 1964 after his conversion to Islam.
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