Obama: Muhammad Ali was The Greatest. Period

United States President Barack Obama joined the masses in paying tribute to Muhammad Ali on Saturday, offering a lengthy message in honor of the beloved boxing icon, who died Friday night.

Related: Muhammad Ali dies at 74

A three-time heavyweight champion who is renowned both for his unsurpassed ability in the ring and his personal convictions outside of it, Ali's stances on religion, politics, and societal norms made him one of the most recognizable people in the world, something Obama discussed at length in an engrossing message.

"Muhammad Ali was The Greatest. Period. If you just asked him, he’d tell you. He’d tell you he was the double greatest; that he’d 'handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder into jail,'" Obama said in a message published Saturday by The White House.

"But what made The Champ the greatest - what truly separated him from everyone else - is that everyone else would tell you pretty much the same thing."

Obama, who noted that he keeps a pair of Ali's gloves in his private study at the Oval Office, just underneath the iconic photo of the transcendent star standing over vanquished foe Sonny Liston, extolled the virtues of Ali not only as a fighter, but as a human being.

'I am America,' he once declared. 'I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me – black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.'

That’s the Ali I came to know as I came of age – not just as skilled a poet on the mic as he was a fighter in the ring, but a man who fought for what was right. A man who fought for us. He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn’t. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.

Obama added: "He wasn’t perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved. But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes - maybe because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves. Later, as his physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace and reconciliation around the world. We saw a man who said he was so mean he’d make medicine sick reveal a soft spot, visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a torch, and fight his greatest fight of all on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that ravaged his body, but couldn’t take the spark from his eyes.

"Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it. Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family, and we pray that the greatest fighter of them all finally rests in peace."