I am huge fan of Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar, Mohammad Rafi, Ghulam Ali and Mehdi Hassan. Listening to these people inspired me to become a singer.
Ali was the African-American who exulted in saying exactly what he was capable of, and the bouncing-boy braggadocio of hip-hop is impossible to imagine without him. So it makes sense that one of his spiritual children, the sunny-dispositioned rapper turned actor Will Smith, would play him.
I didn’t expect one day I become world champion in the United States. I’m very proud to be together with boxing legends. It’s a dream to be in with Muhammad Ali.
U2 was involved in Live Aid, and I ended up going to Ethiopia and working there for some time with my wife, Ali.
The North American media have been very difficult and very critical of Julio Cesar Chavez. Why?… Because a Mexican broke the records of Muhammad Ali.
Ghulam Ali Khan saab is my greatest inspiration.
Martin Luther King didn’t know he was going to have a day named after him; Muhammad Ali didn’t know he was going to be the people’s champion. He was doing what he was doing because it was right.
Muhammad Ali was my idol, and I always say, if Muhammad Ali had told me the exact same thing my mother, the principal, the security guard, my brothers… you know, the same thing they were telling me that I didn’t listen to, I would have listened, just because it came from Muhammad Ali.
I started with ‘Baaghi,’ in which I cast Tiger Shroff. And then with director Imtiaz Ali’s entry in our production, I tried totally different films like ‘Tamasha,’ etc.
The days of the heavyweight champion as civil rights leader are long gone. You think you’d see Ali rolling around on the floor of an ESPN Zone? I don’t think so.
I will watch any film directed by Imtiaz Ali.
Ali would not be Ali unless I had come along. Him and me had three fights.
An offer to fight Muhammad Ali came after Stevenson won his second Olympic gold in Montreal in 1976. Stevenson was at his peak. The world had never seen a heavyweight with the tools Stevenson brought into the ring.
Got a chance to work with amazing and finest directors like Priyadarshan, Anurag Kashyap, Imtiaz Ali, Meghna Gulzar, Vipul Shah, Dibakar Banerjee, Kamal Haasan, etc.
I used to watch old clips of Muhammad Ali, where he’d be talking the jive during interviews, you know, ‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, rumble, man, rumble.’
But I’m very keen to work with directors such as Imtiaz Ali, Zoya Akhtar, Farhan Akhtar, Vishal Bhardwaj, Abhishek Chaubey, Anurag Kashyap and Abhishek Kapoor.
When India conducted nuclear tests in 1974, I wrote a letter to then-Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from Holland and offered my services for Pakistani nuclear programme.
I am blessed that I have worked with great filmmakers and, in that process, I have learned a lot. Be it Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Ali Abbas Zafar, Ashim Ahluwalia or Nagesh Kukunoor, they have all taught me something new.
Mohammed Ali. He’s much more than a boxer. He’s also a passionate idealist who fought for his people. I respect him – and, of course, he was very handsome in his younger days.
My favorite television show of all time is ‘Hill Street Blues.’ I think it’s the show that is to television what Pele was to football or Muhammad Ali was to boxing.
For people who love Tribe, I’m the defector. They say, ‘You should get back with Ali to do the beats.’ But a lot of people don’t realize I did all the music in Tribe. In the first three albums, I did all the beats!
