By Sheryl Gottschall 2025
Muhammed Ali wasn’t just a great boxer, he was a UFO magnet too, reporting to have seen UFOs on multiple occasions throughout his life.
First UFO Sighting in 1970
He saw his first UFO in 1970 when he was out running with one of his trainers. “I happened to look up just before dawn, as I often do while running, and there hovering above us was this brilliant light hanging as if by an invisible thread. At first I thought it was a beacon projected from a helicopter, but moments later a similar object passed in front of us. I brought it to the attention of my trainer who was standing nearby. We watched them come from behind the skyline and move slowly across the sky for at least 15 minutes. The best I can describe the sighting is to just say they were round and big.”
1971 Central Park Sighting
Then on December 2, 1971, Ali and his two personal trainers, Angelo Dundee and Drew Brown, along with UPI sports correspondent Bill Yerigan, reportedly observed two unusually brilliant lights over New York’s Central Park during the Champion’s 5am work-out. While astronomers said he was just seeing Venus, Ali stayed resolute that he was seeing something not of this world.
Beyond Reality Interview
The following year Ali agreed to meet with the staff of US publication Beyond Reality, Timothy Beckley and Harold Salkin, for an interview about his experience in his home in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The following story is from the October 1972 issue of beyond Reality by Beckley and Salkin:
Upon arriving we found that he [Ali] had invited his wife and several of his close friends to the private screening of several motion pictures showing UFOs in flight from our large files which we had consented to show. After viewing the movies several times and obviously determining our sincerity, he settled back and began talking about his own experiences.
“Mind you these UFOs are nothing new to me,” he said. “I’ve a good feeling they’re watching over me boys,” he chatted before going into details. Ali began by relating the experience which took place in Central Park. “We looked up and saw this big ‘thing’ in the sky, it looked like a ‘beacon’ of some sort. A minute or two later a second UFO came overhead. This one had a glowing trail behind it.” Muhammad added, “This was no joke, fellows, all my friends saw it.”
His sighting was later verified by reports from Long Island and New Jersey where a civilian pilot taking off from Newark Airport reportedly came in close contact with a UFO. Ali purports that these craft had been following him for several years. He told us: “Every morning when the sky is clear, between 4 and 5am, you can see them. All you have to do is concentrate your vision on a particular portion of the heavens, and by looking long enough you can tell if there is anything unusual moving up there.”
He added, “They have been around me for at least six or seven years. During this period I must have had close to sixteen or seventeen different sightings. On one occasion I was out driving in a car when this large ship, shaped like a cigar as I recall, came over and its shadow covered both lanes of the highway.”
Ali is of the opinion that the UFOs he has observed are not from any other planet, but represent some earthly culture of which we are not totally aware. The answer, Ali says, is given in detail in Elijah Muhammad’s, ‘A Message to the Black Man in America.’
“This country could really be saved if people would just understand what UFOs mean,” the famous boxer and controversial public figure contends.
Ridiculed On The Johnny Carson Show
On the 7th September 1973, Ali appeared on the Johnny Carson Show to promote a rematch with Ken Norton. Since the rematch was going to be fought in Inglewood, someone had the idea to bring the boxers in to the Johnny Carson show for a preliminary weigh in, officially done the day before the fight.
Out of the blue Ali says to Carson, “I’ve been studying UFOs. Did you know there are UFOs flying around unidentified?” At this point you hear laughter as if he’s pulling Carson’s leg, but Ali remains dead serious. And of course Carson makes jokes which the audience continues to laugh at.
Ali continues to talk about having seen UFOs while out running in the early morning, but again the audience laughs at him. He goes on to say that he’s serious, that a bunch of them have been sighted over Georgia and that Ali himself had seen them at night.
He then said a Mr Harold Sulken, head of the national UFO bureau in Washington DC, gave Ali some documents, photos and films of actual UFOs. No one knows who Harold Sulken was or if he worked for the US government, but it’s suggested by Scott Waring that he probably worked on Project Blue Book.
Ali retained his composure throughout the interview even though the audience kept laughing at him and Carson kept cracking jokes, but like the rest of us Ali said he was surprised that the public didn’t discuss the subject more. Finally he changed the subject, probably disappointed in the response, and began talking about the upcoming fight.
Sightings Over Ali’s Training Camp
In the 26th November 1974 issue of the National Enquirer, an article was published where Ali reported seeing a mysterious cigar-shaped object in the evening sky over his Deer Lake training camp. “This baby would hover briefly, then dart from left to right, criss-crossing the sky. It would stand completely still then – whoosh! – it would disappear. You could see it getting smaller and smaller as it rose into the sky. Then it would flash back in real fast, without a sound.” The following night, August 10, the visitor returned. This time Ali had a witness.
“I’ve remained sceptical about UFOs even though Muhammed is always talking about them”, explained Gene Kilroy, Ali’s business manager, “but I knew I saw something really odd up there over the camp. When Ali brought it to my attention I shrugged it off as being Venus or some star, but later the acrobatics of the thing proved how wrong I had been.”
Ali remembered, “We watched the object for 2 hours and no matter how close it got we could hear no sound.”
By the time of his death in 2016 Muhammad Ali claimed to have seen UFOs on sixteen occasions.
References:
Muhammad Ali on the Johnny Carson Show
UFO Sightings Daily
https://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/2020/10/muhammad-ali-talks-about-seeing-ufos-on.html
Beyond Reality – October/November 1972
UFO Research Queensland - Australia 