Warning: This post contains spoilers for Season 1 of The Greatest
It’s all too easy for sports history to become sports legend — especially when you’re dealing with near-mythic figures like Muhammad Ali. A decade after the boxing great passed away, the new Prime Video series The Greatest offers a closer look at his life and legacy, presenting showrunner Ben Watkins with the unenviable task of getting viewers in the ring to see the private, and not just the public, champ.
“You picture Muhammad Ali, and he’s already this fully-formed legend,” Watkins tells Gold Derby. “What we were trying to do with this entire series — and what we’ll continue to do if we’re fortunate enough to get more seasons — is pull back the curtain and remind you that this is a real person.”
Season 1 follows Ali during the years he was publicly known as Cassius Clay (played in the series by Jaalen Best), an 18-year-old phenom who parlayed a gold medal win at the 1960 Summer Olympics into a title shot four years later opposite then-heavyweight champion Sonny Liston (Amin Joseph). That bout takes center ring in the season finale, “My Name Is…,” which culminates with Ali’s underdog victory and sets up the three-season arc Watkins has planned to follow Ali’s path toward iconhood.
Naturally, the showrunner took some dramatic license in his version of how the Liston vs. Ali fight went down. But he also incorporated details gleaned from friends and family that even Ali’s most knowledgable fans might not have previously been privy to. We asked Watkins some of our most burning reel vs. real questions about the Season 1 finale.
Did Ali freak out before meeting Liston in the ring?
The opening moments of “My Name Is…” depict a moment that’s very much part of the public record — the pre-fight press conference between Ali and Liston where Clay mercilessly taunted Liston with all the swagger and braggadocio that Ali would later become known for as the heavyweight champion. But as soon as Best’s young fighter retreats to his locker room, his demeanor instantly changes from would-be hero to total zero after failing to visibly psych out his bigger, stronger opponent.
“I had a little chance, but only if I got in his head,” Ali admits with genuine fear. “I can’t beat him — he knows it, everybody knows it.”
It’s a scene that brings to mind that famous moment in the original Rocky when the Italian Stallion offers similar sentiments to Adrian about his chances of taking down Apollo Creed. But Watkins says Ali absolutely experienced and expressed similar fears about being able to go the distance against Liston. “When I was doing research and talking to the people that knew him, they revealed that he had a panic attack right before the fight, and was convinced he couldn’t win,” the showrunner remarks. “The people around him had to rebuild him before the fight — that was something I never knew.”
For Watkins, that revelation about Ali’s private pre-fight freakout ended up informing what he hoped to achieve with The Greatest by showing the boxer as a real person and not just the Greatest. “Real people have fears,” he says matter-of-factly. “That scene also really shows you Jaalen’s evolution as an actor. He was going through some of that personally in terms of being a newcomer taking on this role. It was daunting for him in the beginning, but there’s an evolution that we were able to see happen in real time.”
Did Liston actually blind Ali in the fourth round?
It’s one of the long-standing mysteries of heavyweight championships past — what caused Ali to temporarily lose his sight during the fourth round of his bout with Liston? In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the soon-to-be champ’s cornermen accused his opponent’s team of applying some kind of ointment or irritant to Liston’s gloves that got into Ali’s eyes, forcing him to fight with impaired vision for an entire round.
As shown in the series, Ali’s trainger, Angelo Dundee (Giovanni Ribisi), instructed the fighter to survive the round by staying light on his feet, dancing around Liston’s jabs until he could once again see where his own punches would land. Naturally, Liston’s team denied any deliberate blinding, and those accusations went unproven with even Dundee eventually throwing cold water on the idea. So when it came time to dramatize the fourth round for The Greatest, Watkins decided to keep things ambiguous.
“We hint at it, because we do feel like that should be part of the lore,” the showrunner explains. “We talked to Dundee’s son, who said that boxing at the time was so shady that there were always concerns about that kind of thing. That’s also why we show that there are two buckets of water in Ali’s corner; Dundee insisted on that because he wanted to show everyone that he would drink water out of the same bucket as Ali in case they suspected he was on the take. But he also wanted to have a clean bucket of water on hand in case anything went wrong.”
“There was definitely something in Ali’s eyes that night,” Watkins adds. “We found out that there had been similar questions around Liston’s 1959 fight with Cleveland Williams. Williams almost beat Liston, but then he claimed that something got into his eyes and Liston completely destroyed him after that. Ultimately, we left it up to the audience to decide whether it’s true or not. What we do know is that Ali had to survive an entire round with very impaired vision.”
What did Ali tell Liston before his seventh round resignation?
Ali’s attempts to psych out Liston continued into the ring — but that era’s microphones couldn’t pick up the taunts he directed at his opponent while they fought. That gave Watkins the freedom to imagine what Ali might have said to Liston right before the other boxer declined to answer the bell for the seventh round.
In the episode, Best’s Ali closes out the fifth round by delivering a vicious head shot to Joseph’s Liston and then pulls him in close to say, “This is destiny — how are you gonna win against God?” Immediately after that, Liston sinks into his corner stool, visibly deflated. While he goes through the motions for another round, the fight is completely gone from his eyes and his fists. As the bell dings for the seventh round, Liston spits out his mouthpiece, signaling his resignation.
According to Watkins, that devastating psyop originated not with Ali, but instead with his longtime cornerman, Bundini Brown (Reno Wilson). “I knew that Ali had said that line in one of his fights, but I didn’t know if it was said in the Liston fight,” he explains. “But it’s something that Brown used to say, and in my version of the story, he becomes the first person to say it to Ali. Throughout the season, we show how Brown helped bolster Ali and manifested his journey — he really acted as the wild card of his training team. We have that scene in the fourth episode where Ali is talking to himself about destiny in the mirror and you see him building towards that.”
“So while I was writing the finale, I wanted Ali to say something to Liston that was true to the story about how he viewed winning as his destiny,” Watkins adds. “In this moment, he’s not saying it to himself; it’s a way for him to game the situation. And all credit to Amin Joseph — what he goes through in that entire fight is an emotional journey. He goes from, “I’m going to mop the floor with this kid” to “I’m going to be an afterthought, because this kid is destined to be the greatest of all time.”
How did Ali leave things with his dad?
Watkins follows up Liston’s defeat with a knockout dramatic moment between Ali and his father, Cassius Clay Sr. (Omari Hardwick), who has spent the series alternately impressed by and irate with his son’s accomplishments.
“It’s a struggle for him to watch his son ascend to such great heights,” the showrunner notes, describing how he wanted to approach the older Clay’s story. “And his son isn’t just ascending — he’s shooting into the stratosphere. Every step he takes towards that glory is a reminder to Cassius Sr. that he didn’t have the chance to live out his potential because he grew up in a different time.”
Because that internal conflict defined Ali’s father’s own life during the time period covered by the first season, Watkins knew he couldn’t let the finale draw to a close without a father-son reconciliation.
“That final scene is really meant for Cassius Sr.,” he emphasizes. “Despite all the time they’ve been butting heads, Ali ultimately gives his father the most beautiful gift he could — he tells him, ‘I want to be your son, even though I’m now the greatest.’ That was the scene that really put a bow on that storyline and the season.”
