24岁的穆罕默德·阿里在芝加哥一家面包店里，与当时16岁、日后成为他妻子的贝琳达·博伊德调情。一年后，即1967年，两人结为夫妻。

The *very definition* of “groomer” right there.

I hope everyone in here saying "it was a different time" sees your comment and considers that he spoke these intentions aloud. Definitely a different time. Maybe it was different for your grandparents, maybe they really loved each other, but this was gross.

A loooot of people in this thread are giving him a pass. In other threads other celebrities have been roasted for similar situations. Add to this his original take on interracial relationships (steadfast against it) and normally he wouldn't be so well remembered. Then his famous charm and equally famous quote about the Viet Cong, and people immediately dismiss criticisms.

That’s fucked

According to Wikipedia, Ali then cheated on Belinda with *another* 16 year old. >At age 32 in 1974, Ali began an extramarital relationship with 16-year-old Wanda Bolton (who subsequently changed her name to Aaisha Ali) with whom he fathered another daughter, Khaliah (born June 1974). Welp.

Reminds me of the aunties in my culture that don’t consider women over 24 as marriage material. They want 22 year old girls for their 37 year old sons, they say they plan to live with their sons and guide the wife to be the right kind of wife…even now people are kind of done with their crap because so many of those sons are single.

Gross

Yup. My boomer parents were about the same ages when they met, and 10yr gaps were common among my friends' parents.

I had to bring this up to my Mom who was a huge Elvis fan. She definitely does not support older men preying on young women, but when I brought Elvis and Priscilla up it took her a moment to rethink it all.

My grandmother was a West Virginia hills woman who was born in '22. She only went up to the 8th grade, used an outhouse until the county ran a water line through her area when I was in middle school, and chewed tobacco. She married my 25 yr old grandfather when she was 16. Country superstar Loretta Lynn was married at 15 I think. I believe Dolly Parton married a guy in his 20's when she was a teen. The popular tv series Little House on the Prairie, a show beloved for it's "simpler times" family wholesomeness, had no issues depicting such relationships. One of the main daughters married a man who was 25 in the show. In defense of accusations that former Alabama Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore use to prey upon teens at a local mall when he was 30, his supporters pointed out that's "just the way it was back then" and even proclaimed that Mary was only 14 when she had Jesus. And while I can write this off as history, there's more than I care to admit men who still think these kinds of relationships are okay today. I mean, a hundred yrs ago, times were different w/ different standards whether we agree or not. And not only in terms of these kinds of relationships but even the nature of the relationships themselves. Like men were expect to "control" their wives. Domestic violence was viewed as a "family" issue and it was "rude" to intervene. That's within my lifetime even. I was born in the early 70's and learned from one neighbor how regretful he was for stopping his dad from calling the police on mine after watching him whipping the shit outta me or my brother in the front yard when we were little. After the divorce when I was in the Navy, Mom told him stories that shocked him and filled him with regret for doing that. Or how another neighbor told my brother, after we grew up, how much he and his wife hated hearing mine and/or my brother's screams coming outta our house growing up but there was nothing they could do. Or the time when I was 12ish that I ran away when my dad was beating me with his fists. I bolted out the door and kept running. When the state police found me, I told them what happened and I was scared to go home. Dad thanked them after dropping me off. Back then, that was the norm. Today, my dad would be in jail. We've progressed since then. On relationships, domestic violence, and other issues. We know why they are wrong these days.

Most cultures of the world today still see this as perfectly normal, especially in Africa and the Middle East.

Depends on the state, if it's new york state he'd be fine, if it's California he'd be cooked

Most likely not. The majority of states have an age of consent of 16

Ali is easily one of the greatest boxers of all time, so much that even today pretty much everyone knows his name. Nobody talks about Ali the man. Used to be best buddies with Malcolm X, eventually Ali got too extreme for X with stuff like defending child molesters, and helped lay the way to X's assassination. Cassius Clay the politician he was named after was an extremely vocal defender of black rights even when it caused fights to a point where he installed actual cannons in his home for self defense--denounced the name Cassius Clay and called it a "slave name." Sometimes, just sometimes, you can be so amazing at something that the world forgets all the awful things you say and do.

I just looked it up, and they first met when she was 10, which would’ve meant he was… 18 at the time? Oh and when he was 32 he cheated on her with a 16 year old, whom he had a child with and married while still with Belinda. So uh

Yep. I don't give Elvis a pass either. Nasty is nasty.

4 years is not the same as 8 years.

I've seen the justification of war rapes and sexual slavery on the subreddit of a specific religion here. I honestly doubt these people have any humanity left after years of brainwashing by that cult.