Product Details

• Format: Black & White, Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Mpi Home Video
• VHS Release Date: February 23, 1999
• Run Time: 40 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: 6305298432
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #567,956 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Young Muhammad Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, captivated the world in the early 1960s by giving interviews that were bizarre works of performance art. He taunted his opponents and proclaimed to any who would listen, "I am the greatest." This is a peculiar video that consists almost entirely of footage of Ali's bravura performances as interviewee. There is virtually no fight footage, and almost no narration, but that hardly matters. What sportscasters in the 1960s realized is that if you put a microphone in front of Ali, that alone guaranteed great entertainment. Before winning the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston, Ali gleefully proclaimed, "I'll go pop, pop, pop and dance away so fast he'll think he's surrounded." His predictions, which were often offered in rhyme (as in "Sonny Liston will be mine in round 9"), were outrageous in their day, and they hold up as being utterly entertaining in the present era, when athletes are corporations, not characters. Ali's inspired interviews were a zany one-man show, and in the old black-and-white interviews in this video, we see again how his athletic grace in the ring was matched only by his playful genius at the mic. --Robert J. McNamara

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not recommended, March 4, 2000

By 

Kathy Shay (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Muhammad Ali: In His Own Words [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This tape does not include Ali's best material - his repartee with Howard Cosell. I was disappointed that the interview footage shown here does not give a glimpse of Ali's fierce intelligence and sense of humor. The tape provides a rather dull 40 minutes showing career highlights and badly-synched interview segments.