‘I feel like the (Parkinson's) disease is progressing,’ Laila Ali claims
Former heavyweight boxing great Muhammad Ali, 63, who has suffered from Parkinson's disease for many years, is getting worse, his daughter, Laila, told The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.
"I feel like the disease is progressing," she told The Times. "Different things start happening as you get older. I have noticed a change in him, something that goes along with Parkinson's.
"It's painful for me because I would love to sit down and talk to my dad about the way he used to be when he was my age, when he was in his prime, because we are so much alike. I can't really do that. I can't share a lot of things with him."
Laila Ali, 27, who lives in Los Angeles, is an undefeated professional boxer (21-0 with 18 knockouts) and wants to discuss the sport with the three-time former heavyweight champ, according to The Times.
We don't talk about boxing," she told The Times. "He might come to a fight and say, 'You're bad.' But he was never one to talk much about boxing with us. That was not him. And he doesn't talk much these days anyway. It takes him too much energy to talk.
"He has his good days and his bad days. He's taking a lot of different medications. Sometimes, his speech is so slurred, you can't hardly understand him. But he definitely knows what's going on. That's for sure. He sees everything.
"It's his motor skills that Parkinson's affects. So it's like he's trapped inside his body. He can think. He has things he wants to say, but his lips sometimes just don't move to get it out.
He loves to draw, he likes to color, he likes to clip pictures out of magazines. And he likes to do magic tricks. It doesn't take a whole lot to keep him entertained. But his attention span is very short when the subject is something more than that."
"He doesn't feel sorry for himself, so it's hard to feel sorry for him."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9831638/
We don't get to see much of Ali these days. He's still the GOAT in my book.
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