Laila Ali makes history with Greatest Sports Legends Dinner honor 40 years after iconic father
The night was Oct.1, 1986.
The site, the Waldorf Astoria hotel.The event, the inaugural Greatest Sports Legends Dinner to support the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.Less than a year earlier on Oct.
26, 1985, a football player for The Citadel with a familiar last name, Marc Buoniconti, was paralyzed while trying to make a tackle in a game against East Tennessee State.Buoniconti suffered a dislocation of the C3 and C4 vertebrae, and a severe spinal cord injury which would leave him paralyzed from the shoulders down.He would have vertebrae fusion surgery to stabilize his neck and begin his lifelong rehabilitation, which included learning to breath without a ventilator and master a breath-controlled wheelchair.Marc’s famous father, Nick Buoniconti — the Hall-of-Fame linebacker for the Boston Patriots and Miami Dolphins, and iconic co-host of HBO’s “Inside the NFL” — quickly sprung into action.
By the end of 1985 he cofounded the Miami Project with neurosurgeon and spinal cord injury expert Dr.Barth A.
Green.The Greatest Sports Legends Dinner became the organization’s biggest platform for raising awareness and money for research into the mysteries of spinal cord injury.It was no coincidence that the first gathering honored “The Greatest” — Muhammad Ali.“I had the privilege of knowing [Muhammad] for quite some time,” Marc Buoniconti told The Post.
“ We’d been friendly even before the dinner.My dad was friends with [Ali’s trainer] Angelo Dundee, so we made that connection early on.
It was a natural fit for him to be one of the first people that we honored.”Photos from the evening show Ali talking with Marc and Nick Buoniconti, President Nixon, Joe Namath and Bob Cousy.“What an amazing guy, so personable, so friendly,” Marc recalled.“He was super excited to be a part of it, and really helped to put the Buoniconti family and the Miami Project on the map as far as bringing attention to our cause.”On Monday night at the Hilton in...