Ali for New Zealand

Mana (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 6, 15 September 1977, Page 1

Ali for New Zealand

Muhammed Ali will be seen throughout New Zealand’s cinemas from October 22 in a major motion picture dramatising the extraordinary life of the world heavyweight boxing chamnion.

Muhammad All is, without exaggeration, the most recognisable human being on the earth today. On the night of March 8, 1971, he entered the ring in New York’s Madison Square Garden to fight Joe Frazier and uttered a phrase which has since encircled the globe countless times. It was “lam the greatest.” And so he was and is.

Whether it is in his poetry (“They thought the greatest was Sugar Ray, but that was before they saw Cassius Clay”), his noted fight predictions (“I’ll say it again, I’ve said it before; Archie Moore must fall in four”), his conversibn to the Islamic faith, his defiance of the military draft (“I got no quarrel with Viet Cong”), and a successful comeback

following a three-and-a-half-year exile (“I was the only boxer in history people asked questions like a Senator,”), Muhammad Ali is a folk hero to millions of people throughout the world and a legend in his own lifetime. The screen dramatisation of “The Greatest” will come as a great surprise to millions of moviegoers around the world who believe they know the life story of Muhammad Ali. The film discloses incidents and backgrounds in AH’s life which will surprise even the most sophisticated movie viewer. The drama and human quality of the man behind the image, little known to the public, will be revealed for the first time. It is a touching, sometimes funny, often violent, but above all honest story of a man who believed in himself and had the courage to fight for his convictions.