There it is again, that most incredible moment in world sport in the 1970s, laid out under the burning glass of a slow-motion sequence.

We see George Foreman, the massive favourite, traded as almost unbeatable, sink dazed to the ground in the ring of the football stadium in Kinshasa, around four o'clock in the morning local time.

And his 32-year-old tamer Muhammad Ali, how he doesn't strike one last time, but accompanies the process, so to speak.

That was the moment, says a relaxed Foreman almost 35 years later in front of the TV camera, when his conqueror became for him the "greatest boxer I've ever fought" - because of a hit that was deliberately omitted .

Center piece of a three-part ARD night

It is precisely for such passages that it is worth not taking your eyes off the documentary film "Facing Ali" by director Pete McCormack from 2009 for a second in a hundred minutes.

It forms the centerpiece of ARD's three-part "long Muhammad Ali night" on the occasion of his 80th birthday on the night of January 16/17 (available from 0.05 a.m. and from January 15 in the ARD media library).

And unlike Leon Gast's Oscar-winning documentary about the "Rumble in the Jungle" in Zaire ("When We Were Kings"), it's just like the concluding feature about the black culture festival surrounding it ("Soul Power") has never been shown by a German broadcaster before. Now, with his concept, which is as simple as it is clear, he should also convince those who believe that everything has already been said about the boxing icon from Louisville, Kentucky.

Like Canadian author Steven Brunt's book of the same name, which was published seven years earlier with limited success, author, musician and director McCormack calls on those closest to Ali: his opponents.

Almost all of them have gone from adversaries to acquaintances, if not friends, of the three-time world champion over the years – whether their names are Foreman or Frazier, Spinks or Holmes.

And each of them brings just enough personal memories that an impressive overall picture emerges from the different facets almost by themselves.

Impressive, because the appreciation of this opponent, who once mocked her so loudly and usually defeated her, goes far beyond the respect for the exceptional boxer.

"He can't speak for himself," Ken Norton sums up at one point, "but we can speak for him." That's how it is these years, when the pictures of the visibly battered man who went to the games in Atlanta (1996) lit the Olympic flame are long gone.

So, with prim, typically British understatement, Henry Cooper praises the “pretty good chin”, which stands for so much more, while Larry Holmes, the one-time sparring partner and later dominator, has taken to him “like a brother”.

Earnie Shavers, on the other hand, is still amazed to this day how the opponent, who seemed so drained, was able to start again at the end of their summit in New York (1977) "as if it were the first round".

Nevertheless, he immediately finds a good explanation: "He knew many ways to fool you."

The spiritual checksum is drawn by Ron Lyle, a former delinquent of all people who only started boxing while he was in prison. "Ali was all about love," says the reformed man from Colorado, who gave the champion ten and a half rounds of hell in Las Vegas in 1975. That seems all the more valuable today because Lyle, like five other of the ten opponents who were questioned, has since died.

With the German-dubbed theatrical version of “Facing Ali”, SWR has opened up a contemporary document that is almost unknown in this country.

It is the secret pearl in the nocturnal fistfight triptych in honor of the fighter against war, heteronomy and racism who died in June 2016.

All contributions remain available for three months in the ARD media library.

But setting the alarm (or staying up) has always been a worthwhile option in this particular case.

As Leon Spinks says, who won and lost against him in 1978: "There is only one Ali."