Watch teaser for documentary on Muhammad Ali “What’s my name?”
The teaser for Muhammad “The Greatest” Ali’s documentary, “What’s My Name?” has been released.
The documentary follows Ali’s name change from Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. to Muhammad Ali. Apparently, Ali had been named after his father, but he decided he wanted nothing to do with the “slave name” so on March 6, 1964; he changed to his Muslim name – Muhammad Ali and demanded to be addressed by that name from then on.
According to the film’s producer, Sean Stuart, they came at the title randomly when they were looking at producing rolls and one of the film’s top executives suggested the name.
He said: “For us, we had a real ah-hah moment when we working in the edit bay. We were months into the project and Antoine was sitting there working with our editor Jake Pushinsky and we were watching the Ernie Terrell fight from 1967 and Antoine said, ‘Stop, that’s our title.’ We were like, what? ‘What’s my name, that’s our title.’ And that was it.”
During the buildup to the fight between Ali and his friend Ernie Terrell at the Houston Astrodome on February 1967, Terrell called Ali – Cassius Clay several times despite Ali’s warnings but Terrell refused.
On the D-day; at the fight for the WBA and WBC Heavyweight championship, Ali would beat Terrell for 15 rounds all the while taunting him by saying, “What’s My Name?”
The fight is now referred to as “The What’s My Name Fight”.
“What’s My Name?” will premiere on May 15 and is executive produced by Lebron James.
Watch the teaser below:
