Reuters reports: “It’s official — boxing legend Muhammad Ali has Irish roots, Irish genealogists said on Friday.”

Researchers at the Clare Heritage Centre in southwest Ireland said they have evidence that a great grandfather of the three-times world champion hailed from the county town of Ennis, close to the west coast.

Antoinette O’Brien, a genealogist at the center, told Reuters that Ali’s great grandfather, Abe Grady, emigrated to the United States from County Clare in the 1860s, settled in Kentucky and married an African-American woman.

Their son also married an African-American, and one of that couple’s daughters, Odessa Grady, married Cassius Clay in the 1930s. They settled in Louisville, Kentucky where their son, also called Cassius, was born in 1942.

Bein’ of Irish lineage me-self, I’m tempted to make a quip here about Casius McClay, playing on the phrase “punch drunk.” But the good taste what’s been taught me by me mudder — and a desire for me own cold pint just at the moment — prevents me from capitalizing on that particularly easy knockout pun…

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