Boxing champ Ali visits ancestral home

ENNIS, COUNTY CLAIR, Ireland, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- Boxing great Muhammad Ali received a hero's welcome from residents of the Irish town his great-grandfather Abe Grady left to travel to America.

The ailing 67-year-old former world heavyweight champion took a few steps down Turnpike Road in County Clair as the crowds shouted "Ali! Ali! Ali," The Times of London reports.

Ali and wife, Yolanda, unveiled a monument Tuesday at the spot where Abe Grady's two-room thatched cottage once stood.

Grady let Ennis nearly 150 years ago.

Genealogists traced Ali's roots to Abe Grady through land registry documents indicating Grady left Ireland in the 1860s and settled in Kentucky where he married a freed African-American slave.

One of his granddaughters, Odessa Lee Grady, married Cassius Clay Sr., Muhammad Ali's father.

U.S. President Barack Obama also traces his roots to Ireland along with more than 30 million U.S. citizens who claim Irish lineage.