When We Were Kings

IMDb RATING

7.9/10

20K

YOUR RATING

Muhammad Ali in When We Were Kings (1996)

Theatrical Trailer from Gramercy Pictures

Play trailer1:43

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50 Photos

Boxing Sports Documentary Documentary Sport

Boxing documentary on the 1974 world heavyweight championship bout between defending champion, George Foreman, and the underdog challenger, Muhammad Ali.Boxing documentary on the 1974 world heavyweight championship bout between defending champion, George Foreman, and the underdog challenger, Muhammad Ali.Boxing documentary on the 1974 world heavyweight championship bout between defending champion, George Foreman, and the underdog challenger, Muhammad Ali.

Director
- Leon Gast
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.9/10

20K

YOUR RATING

Director
- Leon Gast
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Won 1 Oscar
- 12 wins & 5 nominations total

Videos1

Trailer 1:43

When We Were Kings

Photos49

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
When the film won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali came to the stage with the filmmakers to show they had made peace. Foreman helped Ali, stricken with Parkinson's Disease, climb the steps to the stage.

Quotes
Muhammad Ali: It is befitting that I leave the game just like I came in, beating a big bad monster who knocks out everybody and no one can whup him. That's when little Cassius Clay from Louisville, Kentucky, came up to stop Sonny Liston. The man who annihilated Floyd Patterson twice. HE WAS GONNA KILL ME! But he hit harder than George. His reach is longer than George's. He's a better boxer than George. And I'm better now than I was when you saw that 22-years old undeveloped kid running from Sonny Liston. I'm experienced now, professional. Jaws been broke, been knocked down a couple of times, I'm bad! Been chopping trees. I done something new for this fight. I done wrestled with an alligator. That's right. I have wrestled with an alligator. I done tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail. That's bad! Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick! I'm so mean I make medicine sick!
Don King: Bad dude!
Muhammad Ali: Bad, fast! Fast! Fast! Last night I cut the light off in my bedroom, hit the switch and was in the bed before the room was dark.

Connections
Edited from The Rumble in the Jungle (1974)

Soundtracks
Am Am Pondo
Written by Miriam Makeba
Miriam Makeba Music (ASCAP)
Performed by Miriam Makeba

User reviews77

Featured review

8/10

There Can Only Be One King

Leon Gast's documentary about the 1974 "rumble in the jungle" championship fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali is...

Well, is it even about that, or is it about Ali? I incline to the view that it is the latter. Foreman is not much seen before the fight, and never speaks. Ali is all over the place, talking about his strategy, his love for Africa. We hear celebrities of the day, and boxing commentators. Foreman remains a brooding, fear-inspiring, mysterious opponent, who plans to corner Ali and beat him to death.

Of course, that's not the way it happened, and when this Oscar-winning film came out, more than two decades after the fight, everyone knew it then. So are the film makers trying to evoke the tension in the Ali camp at the time, that he was going to get himself beaten to death for half the $10,000,000 purse, or just to make the story better? Or a combination of the two? Probably the combination. Whichever it is, it's a well told story, and put together very well with talking heads and clips of the time edited together very well.