How big was Ali as an overall sports figure?

Unquestionably the biggest star worldwide in the 1960's and 1970's. Pele probably was his closest competition, but didn't have the stateside recognition that Ali had. Boxing was considerably more mainstream at that point, which helped matters a bit.

 

You had Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, Indira Gandhi, Leonid Brezhnev, Deng Xiaoping, Dustin Hoffman, Clint Eastwood, Dianna Ross, Kris Kristofferson, and Waylon Jenings wanting to bask in his reflective glow for starters. When Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter, and Menachem Begin were working on what would be the Camp David Accord Carter and Sadat stole some time to watch the Ali-Spinks rematch.

 

I would say that certainly throughout the decade of the 70's Ali was the most recognized and celebrated athlete in the world!

 

Pelé was bigger than Ali until Zaire 74. After that is Ali.
There was a civil war in Nigeria in 1969, when Santos was about to play in there the two sides agreed to a cease fire but only during the match to see Pelé playing.

 

At his peak, Ali could have been parachuted anywhere in the world and recognised shortly after landing, he was THAT famous. And all this pre internet. Its actually quite incredible.

 

There was a time that he was the most famous man in the world ... he was gigantic bees nt only was he huge in the States but through out the Muslim world as well ...

 

Ali's fame was unprecedented. Everyone,no matter who or where they were,knew of him.

 

He was a state guest of Leonid Brezhnev in the Soviet Union. His challenge of Larry Holmes was close circuited live to both the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China.

John Lennon once infamously said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ, but they were completely unknown in mainland China until Xinhua finally acknowledged their existence in a story about Lennon's assassination.

Muhammad Ali however was indeed far bigger than John Lennon ever possibly could've fantasized about the Beatles ever becoming. (Ditto Elvis, who was also unknown behind the Iron Curtain.) He completely revived boxing as the result of Kinshasa, was easily the most famous human being in the world, and was fully aware of it. He held onto the WBA HW Championship for a bit after Leon Spinks II in order to use his possession of that Championship as a bully pulpit. (Norton and Holmes were completely in his shadow. To the WORLD, Muhammad Ali was THE CHAMPION!)

Nobody in boxing has ever been that famous before or since, and never can be. He's probably the only boxer who will ever be the world's most famous person, and the only person in sports who will ever be the most famous person in the world. (Pele? Only if his fame matched Ali's in both the Muslim and Communist worlds.)

 

To Wikipedia entries about Muhammad Ali, who obviously had his greatest popularity long before the Internet era.

That's why the sheer click number isn't that decisive.

But: entries in 136 different languages

Compared with that: Mike Tyson (85), Floyd Mayweather Jr. (59), Wladimir Klitschko (45) or Michael Jordan (107).
But Pele (141) has a few more entries. Football is big in many small countries though. Ali was a representative figure of Islam (some countries with large population) and famous in Africa as well.
He is definately up there.

 

I have him as one of the three most consequential African Americans of the twentieth century. You can guess the other two, one of whom was his intimate.

 

He was massive..

 

Definitely.

 

Foreman summed it up when he said Ali wasn't the greatest boxer he'd ever fought, he was the greatest man...A cultural icon without doubt.

 

Ali was the most recognizable and famous PERSON, not just athlete, worldwide during the 1970s!