Boxing great’s daughter says new Ken Burns documentary for PBS will show how he coped with fame – and used it for social purposes
In February 1964 Muhammad Ali, then 22-year-old Cassius Clay of Louisville, Kentucky, proclaimed for the first time “I am the greatest” before snatching, from Sonny Liston, the first of his three world heavyweight boxing titles.
It was true then as now, but as a comprehensive new, four-part PBS documentary Muhammad Ali by the acclaimed film-maker Ken Burns establishes, there was more intricacy to the charismatic and controversial boxer’s life than his towering sporting mythology sometimes allows.