Singer-actor Kris Kristofferson, who sang for his longtime friend at the celebration, was with Ali on Friday when the champ toured exhibits showing him in his prime.

“I think he was awed by the realization of a dream,” Kristofferson said Saturday night while making a red-carpet entrance for the celebration. “I was so awe-struck, myself.”

“To read his words that were shown throughout the center, remind you of what a pure soul he’s always been.”

Across the street, about 200 admirers chanted Ali’s name when the champ arrived for the celebration. Ali struck a boxing pose and waved to his fans.

Tammie Vest, 37, of Louisville, remembered her family gathering around the television to watch Ali fights.

“He’s a local hero,” said Vest, who watched the arrival of celebrities with her teenage daughter and one of her daughter’s friends.

In a scene reminiscent of the era when Ali was in his prime as a fighter, a couple of peace activists protested war — this time in Iraq.

“I hate boxing but I’m here for him,” Carol Rawert Trainer said of Ali.

Trainer, who grew up in the Louisville suburbs, said she once considered Ali unpatriotic for his refusal to enter the military during the Vietnam War as a conscientious objector.

“I was against Ali then as a military person,” said Trainer, who joined the Air Force after high school in the 1960s.

She now sees Ali differently: “He was right and I was wrong to think the way I did,” she said. “He’s a hero, one of the best people in the world as far as trying to bring peace to the world.”

INTERACTIVE Athletes in the struggle Take a look at athletes from Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and their fight for equality.

Lonnie Ali said in an interview Friday that her husband hopes for a peaceful solution in Iraq. “He just wishes there could have been an alternative way to achieve what we wanted to achieve without going to war,” she said.

She added that her husband — one of the world’s most famous Muslims — also “abhors terrorism. The things that are being done in the name of Islam, he abhors that because it distorts the religion.”

Ali basked in adulation for the second time this month. The 63-year-old fighter recently received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, from President Bush, who called Ali “the greatest of all time.”

Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. in Louisville in 1942, learned to fight after having his bicycle stolen as a boy. He won a gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome and went on to win the heavyweight title three times as a professional until retiring in 1981. He changed his name after converting to Islam.

Lonnie Ali has said her husband hopes the center, an $80 million project, will inspire visitors, especially youngsters, to reach their potential and promote peace. The center will open to the public on Monday.

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