When David Frost Met Muhammad Ali

Produced by Sky Documentaries, ‘David Frost vs…’ takes an in-depth look at television moments that made history during the 20th century. The journalist interviewed many world-famous celebrities over a career spanning more than five decades, beginning in the 1960s.

His hard-hitting and frank interviews included legendary film star Elizabeth Taylor’s revelations about Hollywood studio boss Louis B Mayer and discussing the meaning of life with Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison after their studies with yoga guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Among Frost’s most fascinating TV moments were his famous meetings with three-times world heavyweight boxing champion Ali. Despite their different backgrounds, Kent-born Frost had a close and enduring friendship with the American sportsman, conducting 12 broadcast interviews with him and talking with him off-camera innumerable times.

First meeting

David Frost met Muhammad Ali for the first time in 1968, after the journalist earned his major career break in 1962, when he was plucked from obscurity to host a television show.

Born in the quiet parish of Tenterden, Methodist minister’s son Frost attended grammar school, while also teaching Bible classes at church. A promising footballer, he was offered a contract with Nottingham Forest FC, but instead became a lay preacher on leaving school. However, after two years, he returned to education, studying English at Cambridge University. His interest in journalism was sparked as editor of the Varsity student newspaper. He also joined Cambridge Footlights Drama Society, which led to his first visit to a television studio, where he immediately felt at home.

On leaving school, Frost became a trainee reporter at Associated-Rediffusion, London’s television franchise holder. In his spare time, he had a second career as a stand-up performer at Berkeley Square’s Blue Angel nightclub.

In 1962, a new BBC TV satire show was being launched, That Was the Week That Was, and writer and producer Ned Sherrin needed a host. His friend John Bird, Frost’s flatmate, suggested Sherrin should watch Frost’s act at the Blue Angel. After being hand-picked by Sherrin to host the new show at the age of 23, Frost rocketed to stardom overnight.

For the next five years, he hosted many successful satirical and current affairs programmes, including The Frost Report. His fame spread across the Atlantic and in 1968, he signed a lucrative £125,000 deal with the US Westinghouse Corporation network to host The David Frost Show three times a week on their Group W television stations in America. Frost first met Ali in a New York television studio later that year, when their relationship got off to a rocky start.

Muhammad Ali controversy

At the time of the first Muhammad Ali interview, he had sparked controversy in the US with his opposition to the Vietnam War, which had begun in 1955. Around 2.7 million American troops had been shipped out as allies of the South Vietnam government to fight on the frontline against the communist regime of North Vietnam. Ali had registered for conscription in the US military on his 18th birthday, but in 1966, when notified he was eligible to be drafted to Vietnam, he publicly refused to serve in the army and declared himself a conscientious objector on religious grounds.

Born in Louisville in 1942, at a time of racial segregation in America, the sign painter’s son was descended from former enslaved American, Archer Alexander, and wasn’t even permitted to have a drink of water at a local store because of his colour. Ali declared his ethical objection to the war, saying he had “no quarrel” with the people of Vietnam. A dedicated social activist and anti-racism campaigner, he asked why he should “go ten thousand miles from home to drop bombs and bullets” on the Vietnamese population, while people in his own neighbourhood were “treated like dogs and denied simple human rights”.

Already an established boxer after making his professional debut in 1960, aged 18, he won all his 19 fights, including 15 by knockout, over the next three years. However, in 1967, he was found guilty of the criminal offence of violating the Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. He was subsequently stripped of his boxing titles and his licence was revoked, although the US Supreme Court eventually overturned his conviction in 1971.

First interview 1968

Coming at a time of social and political unrest in the US, the first televised interview between Muhammad Ali and David Frost, both young men in their 20s, created controversial and gripping viewing, being broadcast live on primetime TV. Never one to shirk difficult questions, Frost asked Ali bluntly, “Would you like to see a day when black and white people got on great?” The interview turned into a debate that revolved mainly around race and the US civil rights movement, rather than boxing. Ali had some “fierce views” on racial issues, according to David Frost’s son, Sky News presenter Wilfred Frost, who described the meeting as “heated and combative”.

Wilfred described the way his father handled it as “extraordinary”, as he had to “think on his feet” due to Ali’s “often justifiable anger” at the system. “He’s holding him to account, but with a kind of warmth and humour,” Wilfred explains, preventing the interview from becoming simply an argument and shaping it into a reasoned exchange of views. Despite the explosive first interview, Wilfred said the subsequent relationship between Ali and his father was so good that they developed a mutual respect and the boxer returned for eleven more interviews.

Muhammad Ali interview 1974

The most famous interview between Frost and Ali took place in 1974, before Ali’s legendary fight against heavyweight champion George Foreman, one of the hardest punchers in the history of heavyweight boxing. Taking place in Kinshasa, Zaire, on 30th October, the “Rumble in the Jungle” attracted global media interest, with Frost interviewing the title contender in the run-up. Confident of victory, after “trash talking” that he had “wrestled with an alligator, tussled with a whale and handcuffed lightning” as part of his training, Ali told Frost, “If you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned, wait till I whip Foreman!”

Now aged 32, with slightly slower reflexes, Ali had no doubt he would win, even though he was the underdog. He defied the odds in beating Foreman with his now famous “rope-a-dope” tactic, hanging back and letting Foreman tire himself out, before Ali finally won with a flurry of punches in the eighth round. It was the most watched live TV broadcast in history, attracting a global audience of one billion viewers.

Later careers

David Frost and Muhammad Ali enjoyed many more televised interviews, during which “they both helped each other change their views.  They became very close friends”, according to Wilfred.

In 2003, Frost interviewed Ali 35 years after they first met, in one of the retired boxer’s final interviews after his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 1984. After fans expressed concern at Ali’s fragile appearance when lighting the Olympic flame in Atlanta in 1996, he reassured them the drugs were “more or less” working, explaining , “Some days I’m up, some days I’m down.”

They remained friends until Frost’s death, aged 74, from a heart attack in August 2013. Ali passed away, at the same age, in June 2016 after being hospitalised with a respiratory illness.