MIAMI – Cassius Clay became a world champion in South Florida.
He converted to Islam while living here and he became Muhammad Ali here. It's where he first described floating like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
"He lives here, trains here, fights here," writer and producer Gaspar Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez knows the story of Ali and South Florida. His 2008 documentary "Muhammed Ali: Made in Miami" follows the boxing great from his days at the Fifth Street Gym to the day he shook up the world by beating Sonny Liston.
"The film really begins with him winning the gold medal and coming to Miami, and it takes us through the next six years of his life," Gonzalez said. "It started as a project we were doing at the Herald and then discovering all these people were still here."
The film captured Ali on the cusp of greatness. It looked at how South Florida influenced Ali in the ring and outside of it.
He trained in a segregated Miami Beach, lived in a colored motel before moving into a house in Allapattah.
Ali's career and Miami came of age together and like the rest of the country, it wasn't always pretty.
"At that time, you couldn't if you were black. You couldn't be on Miami Beach unless you had a reason," Gonzalez said. "He was stopped. A young black guy running across the causeway. Police see him, they stop him and say, 'Where are you going? They don't know who he is."
By the time Ali left South Florida, he'd met the Beatles and turned to Malcolm X and the nation of Islam. He was unabashed by his opposition to the draft and the Vietnam War.
"His famous pronouncement about the war in Vietman, the "I've got no problem with the Vietcong.' He makes that pronouncement on his front lawn in the Brownsville section of Miami. Cassius Clay might not have become Ali anywhere else but Miami."