The U.S. Postal Service is issuing two commemorative postage stamps this week to honor legendary boxer and Louisville native Muhammad Ali. The stamps will be sold in sheets of 20 for $15.60, starting on January 15, according to the postal service’s website.
The stamp design, created by postal service art director Antonio Alcalá, features a 1974 black-and-white Associated Press photograph of the boxer. The image captures Muhammad Ali with his gloves upright, intensely focused and looking directly at the camera lens.
On the postal service’s website, Alcalá described the seal as featuring a “compelling” image of the boxer making direct eye contact.
“The stance and boxing gloves clearly communicate how he became an American sports icon,” Alcalá said, according to the Courier Journal.
“There are many facets to Ali,” Alcalá added. “I felt it was important to represent him on the stamp as a boxer, but also to include a photo showing his non-boxing side.”
The design of one stamp features a photograph in the top section and the name “Ali” written in dark brown below it. The words “The Greatest” appear in a medium-brown color, running vertically up the right side of the “I” in “Ali.”
The stamp design also features a photograph on the lower portion, with the name “Ali” printed in red above it. The phrase “The Greatest” is aligned vertically in peach on the right side, next to the letter “I” in “Ali.”
A 1976 photograph of Ali, smiling in a suit, is also included on the sheet, which contains 20 stamps.
The postage stamps are available for pre-order online at www.store.usps.com and will also be sold at post offices across the country, as announced by postal service officials on January 12th.
The agency announced to USA Today that twenty-two million Muhammad Ali stamps are slated for printing.
The issuance of Ali’s stamps is a fitting, full-circle tribute to the late boxing legend, who once famously joked that he should be immortalized on a postage stamp because it was “the only way I’ll ever get licked.”
Widely regarded as the most famous and influential boxer of all time, and a cultural force who fused athletic brilliance with political conviction and showmanship, Ali is being honored for the first time with a commemorative U.S. postage stamp.
“As sort of the guardian of his legacy, I’m thrilled. I’m excited. I’m ecstatic,” Lonnie Ali, his wife of nearly 30 years, told The Associated Press. “Because people, every time they look at that stamp, they will remember him. And he will be in the forefront of their consciousness. And, for me, that’s a thrill.”
Muhammad Ali, nicknamed “The Greatest,” died in 2016 at 74 after fighting Parkinson’s disease for over thirty years. He won many awards during and after his life, such as an Olympic gold medal (1960), the UN Messenger of Peace award (1998), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2005).
His wife stated that putting his picture on a stamp would be meaningful because it would show Ali’s dedication to kindness and his ability to connect with others.
“He did it one person at a time,” Lonnie remarked. “And that’s such a lovely way to connect with people, to send them a letter and to use this stamp to reinforce the messaging in that life of connection.”
The Muhammad Ali Forever Stamp will be officially launched at a first-day-of-issue ceremony on Thursday in Louisville, Kentucky. The city is significant as it is the famed boxer’s birthplace and home to the Muhammad Ali Center, which celebrates his life and legacy.
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