What's My Name: Muhammad Ali

Great doc but I'll take two stars away for two MASSIVE omissions. One is Howard Cosell's iconic proclamation during the second Frazier fight of, "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!", and secondly, the chant of Zaire children before the Foreman fight of "Ali, boma ye!!" (Ali, kill him!") which was also equally iconic. These two sayings are incomparable benchmarks during his legendary run. A pure icon. The truth.

I have watched many and ANY documentary I can find on Muhammed Ali - including the obvious When We Were Kings. While that one is great, this is the DEFINITIVE movie of Ali. It is a flawless account of the greatest boxer of all time.

"What's My Name: Muhammad Ali" (2019 release; 2 parts; 162 min.) is a two part TC documentary about Muhammad Ali's illustrious career, both in boxing and outside of that. As Part 1 opens, we hear Ali getting ready for a fight, as told in his own words. We are "March 8, 1971" at Madison Square Garden, for the "fight of the century". We then go back in time, to then-Cassius Clay's early days growing up in Louisville, and quickly establishing himself as a strong boxing presence, leading up to the 1960 Olympic Games, where he obtains the gold medal. At this point we are 10 min. into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this documentary is directed by none other than Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day"), and executive-produced by LeBron James, among others. Very early in his career Cassius Clay earned the nickname "Bigmouth" from the Cubans when he was training in Miami Beach right after the 1960 Olympics, and that nickname was meant as a gesture of respect and/or admiration, and it made the task of the film makers immensely easier as frankly all they needed to do was to collect audio and video clips of Clay's/Ali's many, many, MANY public appearances over the decades, and he'll tell the story himself. Which is exactly what this documentary does: it's mostly Ali's own telling. Some of these clips are well known, others not so much. Watch for the many astute racial commentaries that Ali makes, using clever wordsmithing (at one point Ali comments about the use of the word "blackmail", and why is isn't "whitemail"). Even at a running time of over 2 1/2 hrs., this clips by in no time, as we get to witness one of the most iconic sport stories ever, along with a good dose of social and civil rights history. Part 1 (which runs through March 8, 1971) is clearly the better half of the documentary, mixing the sports and social/civil rights aspects brilliantly. Part 2 focuses mainly on the last decade of his boxing career, almost to the exclusion of everything else, and finishing up with a career record of 56-5. Just think of how many more wins Ali would've surely racked up had he not been banned from boxing for three years (1967-70) just as he was in the very peak of his boxing career! This documentary is enjoyable from start to finish, even if there are few if any "new" revelations of course some of this has already been covered before (see for example "Ali & Cavett: The Tale Of the Tapes" from earlier this year).

"What's My Name" Muhammad Ali" premiered last year on HBO. In the current COVID-19 pandemic I've been catching up on various TV shows and documentaries that I somehow missed when they originally aired. I just watched this on HBO On Demand the other night. So glad that I found this documentary. If you have any interest in Muhammad Ali and/or the social and civil rights environment of this country in the 60s and 70s, I'd readily suggest you check this out and draw your own conclusion.

A year or so before The Last Dance looked back at Michael Jordan and the Bulls, a lot of people were also praising this sports documentary which I missed at the time. There is a loose comparison to be made between the two because they do both focus on an icon of their sport/time, are delivered with plenty of input from the subject, and generally show how their subject was great, but also how they were flawed in some ways. Unlike Last Dance, which uses contributors looking back, What's My Name is built entirely of archive footage - with even the 'contributions' over the top of archive footage being taken from archive footage/recordings.

Although it is almost 3 hours long, it is engaging throughout, as it follows Ali from the start of his career through to the end and into the later stages of his life. There is plenty of good sports action, and the film chooses these wisely; for example it spends very little time on the Rumble in the Jungle fight, I assume because anyone watching this has almost certainly seen When We Were Kings, which focuses heavily on that fight. The footage selected generally is very well picked and edited. I'd not seen a lot of the material in this film, and I read that some has never been seen before. The editing is hugely impressive, not just the task of selecting material, but the feat of putting it together in a way that has such good flow and consistency - it works really well. Where it works is that it tells and shows a story of the man - very much warts and all. His elevation of racism, and his ability to talk about it in forums where it normally would not have been are well shown, but so too is the way he weaponised it inwards - against Joe Frazier in particular, one example being suggesting Frazier won on points due to him being a "good boy" (the 2008 film Thrilla in Manila is a good one to see the impact on Frazier of this type of assault. There is plenty like this in here and it shows his cruelty.

The aging process is really clearly shown too; it is almost hard in the second part to watch Ali slow down so much, and continue fighting after his prime and as it must have been doing significant damage to him. His motivations and political work were clear, but still. So overall more than the celebration / retrospective that I had expected it to be. It has a lot more edge in its presentation, making it a better film, and doing so on top of a great feat of footage selection and use.

HBO doing wonders as usual with this inspiring and gripping documentary of Muhammad Ali. Perfectly capturing Ali for who he is and what he was about. The impact he had on those around him is clearly evident and you feel a connection with Ali while watching this masterpiece. This would definitely be the first Muhammad Ali documentary I would recommend to anyone if they were interested in learning about Ali.