HBO Sports’ ‘What’s My Name | Muhammad Ali’ receives Sports Emmy nomination

Part one of the HBO Sports documentary What’s My Name | Muhammad Ali has been nominated for Outstanding Long Sports Documentary for the 41st annual Sports Emmy Awards, it was announced today.

What’s My Name, directed by Antoine Fuqua, with executive producers LeBron James and Maverick Carter as part of the team, was something I thought I didn’t necessarily need in my life, being honest — another Ali documentary? What more is there to say? What more is there to see?

But it wound up an excellent addition to the long history of documentaries and other works on the legendary heavyweight champion and worldwide icon, widely recognized still as “The Greatest” in more than just nickname.

If you have HBO in any form, the documentary (both parts) is streaming on demand at this time, and if you haven’t watched it yet, it’s well worth doing so. There is no narration presented throughout, it is two hours of archive footage telling its own story, and Fuqua puts it all together masterfully. It’s also very real in that sense; you see Ali change and diminish over the years, and you see it plainly and honestly, just as it really was.