Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

I'm going to float like a butterfly and sting like a beef. Oh, that voice. I am the greatest.

Loud, poetic, unmistakable, Muhammad Ali.

Earlier this summer, President Trump announced that he was considering posthumously pardoning the boxing legend.

Ali, you may recall, was convicted of a felony in the 1960s for refusing to be drafted during the Vietnam War.

But here's the thing, Ali doesn't need a pardon. Why? Well, his conviction was already overturned by the Supreme Court in a decision almost as

contentious and nail-biting as one of Ali's own boxing matches.

It was so close that one of the justices changed his mind as he was in the middle of writing the decision.

Amazing. Here's the story.

In 1967, Ali, like many other young men at the time, was called for the draft.

And like many of those men, he had no intention of serving in the army.

It was a time when American soldiers were dying across Vietnam.

Protesters were burning draft cards and conscientious objectors were fleeing to Canada.

But Ali wasn't going to flee to exercise his objection.

Instead, he turned up at the induction center

and when his name was called,

he refused to step forward and be inducted into the army.

Outside the center, he handed out a statement that read,

It is in the light of my consciousness as a Muslim minister and my own personal convictions

that I take my stand in rejecting the call to be inducted.

The consequences were immediate.

Later that day, he was stripped of his boxing license.

...