Jacquet Bazemore reached the pinnacle of his sport as a top-ranked kickboxer and sparring partner for Muhammad Ali, but he was also a tough child of the streets who had seen the inside of a prison.

Most recently he was trying to use his lifetime of martial training to keep kids out of trouble at Martial Artists Against Street Violence in Larimer.

“That was his passion,” said his fiancee, Wendy Wagner, “to give back to children and to teach them something other than the street.”

Mr. Bazemore died in his sleep Sunday at his North Side home on the same day a picture of him ran in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette showing him leading a martial arts class, part of a feature on efforts to reduce violence in the city. He was 65.

Blessed with an imposing body and skills to match, the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Mr. Bazemore was a nephew of the late boxer Archie Moore, a former world light heavyweight champion. A Vietnam combat veteran, Mr. Bazemore gravitated toward full-contact kickboxing in the 1970s at a time when the sport was becoming popular, amassing a 16-1 record by 1978.

That year in Cleveland, he beat the champion, Ross Scott, but the bout was ruled a non-title fight because Mr. Scott was in litigation with the Professional Karate Association. Two years later, the men had a rematch, before which Mr. Bazemore implied that Mr. Scott had been ducking him.

“It’s hard to keep running from the top man,” Mr. Bazemore said. “So he had to fight me.”

Mr. Scott won in the third round.

Despite that loss, Mr. Bazemore was regarded as gifted and powerful fighter. He once fought in Madison Square Garden in New York City and had been invited to spar several times with Muhammad Ali at his Pennsylvania training camp in the late 1970s.

“He was very talented,” said one of his former managers, Bill Viola Sr. “He was a dominant-looking figure.”

After his pro career, he served as a referee for regional tough guy contests — the forerunner to today’s mixed-martial arts events — run by Mr. Viola and Frank Caligiuri. Although generally soft-spoken, Mr. Bazemore was an intimidating presence, necessary in the rowdy early days of anything-goes bouts.

“We needed someone in the ring who was big and a body they would respect,” Mr. Viola said.

In 2010, he was honored for his referee work by the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum at the Heinz History Center.

Born in 1950, Mr. Bazemore served two terms in Vietnam with the Marines in 1964 and again in the early 1970s. He had studied traditional tae kwon do under Augustine Lee in Pittsburgh and then received more martial training in the Marines while stationed in the Philippines and Okinawa.

After his career wound down in the 1980s, Mr. Bazemore drifted into trouble by “hanging around a bad crowd,” Mr. Viola said.

Mr. Bazemore ended up spending two years in prison in the late 1980s for refusing to testify against a man accused of killing his cousin during a 1987 burglary in the East Hills during which Mr. Bazemore was also shot in the hand.

His silence finally ended when the district attorney’s office agreed not to pursue the revocation of Mr. Bazemore’s probation from a 1984 bank robbery, according to accounts in The Pittsburgh Press.

In later years Mr. Bazemore moved to Florida and spent his time teaching martial arts and putting on exhibitions throughout the South while working odd jobs to support himself.

He traveled back and forth between Florida and Pittsburgh and also found religion, studying theology at the University of Pittsburgh and setting himself up as a pastor while teaching martial arts at his school on Frankstown Avenue.

“He’s from the area, so he wanted to give back,” said his daughter, Jacquette Bazemore.

Funeral arrangements were not complete on Sunday.

First Published: February 15, 2016, 5:00 a.m.