Barry Clifford: Saad Muhammad: "I was 5 years old and I was running for my life."

                                                       Saad Muhammad in his prime

Mr. Saad Muhammad was an infant when his mother died. That was when his financially-strapped aunt told his brother to leave him in Center City.

"He took me out in the city, where I wouldn't know where I was or how to find my way home, and ran away from me. I tried to run after him. I ran as fast as I could. I was 5 years old and I was running for my life."

Saad, thankfully, was found by a Police officer and taken into care by the social Services

When I read that simple statement from Saad I found it hard to hold back the tears and more so because I know exactly how he had felt because my childhood was almost the same as his. The cruelty of others becomes distilled by time as you choose wisely to let go, though it is otherwise hard to forget. Saad never forgot as he fought his way through to the top of the boxing light heavyweights and did not stop even when he was on top.

Winning the World Boxing Council light-heavyweight title in 1979, and defending it nine times, he retired in 1992 with a 49-16-3 record and 35 knockouts. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1998.

All of his fame and extraordinary beginnings did not stop him becoming homeless again as he was in the beginning of his childhood, and even then he kept on fighting to try to put things right for those he knew never had a fighting chance inside or outside of any ring. Becoming an advocate for the forgotten and dispossessed, teaming up with the charity, One Step Away, he was also the spokesman for their "Knock Out Homelessness" campaign up until he became terminally sick.

Matthew Saad Muhammad, 59, one of the world’s most exciting boxers, died Sunday morning on the 25^th of May 2014 at Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia.

Barry Clifford