Michael Mann made Will Smith fight professional boxers for Ali (2001)!

Will Smith and Ferrari director Michael Mann took the world by storm back in 2001 when they released Ali. Being the biopic of Cassius Clay aka Muhammad Ali, the film was loved and showered with praise from around the world.

Being a director with a knack for accuracy and perfectionism, Michael Mann revealed that there were no stunt doubles involved in the filming. The director revealed some astonishing facts about Will Smith and how he had the actor boxing and sparring in real life every day!

Will Smith went through rigorous training for Ali

Ferrari Director Ensured Will Smith Fought In Real Life!

Michael Mann has been known around the world for being one of the absolute perfect directors of all time. Working on a plethora of biographical films throughout his career, Mann created the iconic 2001 movie Ali starring Will Smith.

A still of Will Smith and Michael Mann from Ali (2001)

Being a movie about boxing and the life of Muhammad Ali, Mann left no strings unattended. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the director revealed that he made sure Will Smith was fighting every day for six hours, five days a week! Mann further revealed that every fighter that the audience saw in Ali was a real boxer and champion from the sparring world and not just a stunt double!

“First of all, Will became a fighter. He boxed every Thursday, and worked out six hours a day five days a week. He actually trained with [Ali trainer] Angelo Dundee. So Will hit and got hit. There was choreography where we knew certain things were coming, certain historical events that we knew we had to include, but in between it was all improvised sparring.”
He further continued,

“In fact, everybody who plays a boxer in the film IS a boxer. We didn’t use stunt coordinators or stuntmen. Michael Bentt, who plays Sonny Liston, was a WBO heavyweight world champion. James Toney plays Frasier. Charles Shufford [who plays George Foreman] fought [Wladimir] Klitschko on HBO, like, two months ago.”

Despite working so hard for the movie, Will Smith didn’t get an Oscar win for Best Actor for the movie. The Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role instead, went to Denzel Washington for the 2001 movie Training Day.

Denzel Washington Snubbed Will Smith’s Oscar

Denzel Washington won an Oscar for Training Day

Well, you wouldn’t exactly call it snubbing, but Denzel Washington received his Oscar 9 years too late. Starring in the iconic 1992 film Malcolm X, fans and critics agreed that Denzel Washington should have won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for that movie.

Will Smith’s 2001 movie Ali, however, did not receive Oscar nods and Denzel Washington starrer Training Day was considered one of the favorites. In the year 2002, Washington received the Oscar for Best Actor in a Lead Role for the film Training Day while Will Smith and Jon Voight received Oscar nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role and Best Actor in a Supporting Role respectively. Michael Mann’s 2001 biopic, Ali, is currently available to stream on Starz in the U.S.