Our South Florida satellite, uplink broadcast studio covered the death of iconic, legendary boxing heavyweight champion, Muhammad Ali. We were honored to welcome another former heavyweight champion and close friend of Ali’s, Evander Holyfield, to our studio in downtown Fort Lauderdale!

Evander spent several days at our studio, as all the network news stations requested him to be live on the set during what turned out to be a week long tribute to Muhammad Ali.  Included in this blog post, is the video clip from our studio’s remote liveshot with Evander on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews.  It was honor meeting and getting to know Evander Holyfield as he shared some of his personal stories of growing up, his family and also gave us insight into his professional career as one of the greatest boxers of all time!

Muhammad Ali passed away at the age of 74, after a lengthy 32 year battle with Parkinson’s Disease.  Ali is considered by many as the greatest boxing champion of all time. He is also widely regarded as one of the most influential and prominent celebrated sports figures and celebrities in history.

Although Ali will be remembered as arguably the “greatest” boxing champion of all time, he also was a very involved and active in the arena of politics and religion. He was an anti-establishment man who refused to serve in the Vietnam War because of his strong religious and political beliefs. Ali, converted to Islam during his younger years as a heavyweight boxing champion. Even before hsi passing, with his health in a declining spiral, he did not shy away form voicing his political opinions and opposition to issues and laws he strongly opposed. He criticized then candidate Trump, when the President proposed a ban on Muslims entering the United States. Ai focused on Islam being a peaceful religion, and was very critical of those who used the religion to promote their own agendas.