by Tim Gordon
In Prime Video’s Muhammad Ali series, the Snowfall standout finds the wounded man beneath boxing’s most intimidating reputation.
Amin Joseph as Sonny Liston brings an unexpected emotional dimension to Prime Video’s The Greatest, challenging decades of boxing mythology while revealing the complicated human being behind one of the sport’s most intimidating figures. History has made Muhammad Ali immortal. It has been considerably less generous to the man who stood across the ring from him.
Liston, the fearsome heavyweight champion whose encounters with a young Cassius Clay helped change boxing forever, has often been reduced to a scowl, a pair of punishing fists and a convenient villain in someone else’s triumph. Joseph wants audiences to see something more: a man whose extraordinary physical power could never completely conceal his emotional wounds.
For Joseph, known to television audiences as the formidable yet vulnerable Jerome Saint on Snowfall, the opportunity represented something beyond another transformative performance. Amin Joseph as Sonny Liston becomes an exploration of dignity, identity and the historical treatment of Black men whose reputations frequently overshadowed their humanity.
In a conversation with TheFilmGordon, Joseph recalled recognizing immediately that creator and showrunner Ben Watkins intended to deliver something more substantial than a conventional sports biography. Liston would be a husband, a father, a man capable of humor, vulnerability and love, and someone searching for redemption.
The Man Behind the Reputation
The contrast between Ali and Liston is central to Joseph’s interpretation. Ali possessed the charisma, language and growing cultural influence to shape his own story. Liston spent much of his life being defined by others. For Amin Joseph as Sonny Liston to resonate, the actor needed to understand the distance between the champion’s public image and private existence.
Research revealed a fighter whose identity had been filtered through promoters, handlers and an industry deeply entangled with organized crime. Joseph found abundant material documenting Ali’s experiences, but relatively little that allowed Liston to speak for himself.
The distinction reflected two different Black experiences in America: one man coming of age amid demands for liberation, the other carrying the scars of a brutal upbringing and a system that seldom permitted him to escape his past.
“Sonny learned to fight, and then he learned to box,” Joseph explained, describing a childhood marked by hardship and a later passage through prison before boxing offered a possible future. Liston believed becoming heavyweight champion might finally earn him respectability. Instead, he remained a figure to be feared rather than celebrated.
Joseph resisted the easy conclusion that Liston necessarily resented Ali’s freedom. Their experiences were separated by more than age. Ali challenged institutions in ways Liston had learned might carry unbearable consequences.
Amin Joseph as Sonny Liston: Carrying an Invisible Weight
Joseph’s preparation demanded the physical conditioning expected of a boxing drama, but muscle alone could not communicate Liston’s burden. The actor needed to discover what it felt like to have every achievement overshadowed by the past. His solution was strikingly literal.
“I walked around all of Toronto, actually, with a kettlebell,” he recalled. “That kettlebell represented a weight that I could not drop.”
The object became a private reminder of the scrutiny, isolation and rejection Joseph believed Liston carried into every room. Months of training and roadwork were necessary, but the emotional discipline proved more revealing.
What distinguishes Amin Joseph as Sonny Liston is the tension between physical dominance and emotional confinement. Joseph explored silence as a defining characteristic, imagining a man capable of intimidating opponents who nevertheless struggled to make himself heard.
The familiar stare takes on another meaning. It no longer belongs exclusively to a predator preparing to strike. It suggests someone protecting himself, keeping pain beneath the surface because the world has shown little interest in hearing it.
Two Champions, Two Generations
Of course, The Greatest must also make its boxing believable. Opposite Jaalen Best, who portrays Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali, Joseph found a younger scene partner whose commitment sharpened his own. He praised Best’s extraordinary preparation, likening the actor to “a well-tuned Ferrari,” while joking about the challenge of chasing him around the ring.
Their collaboration extended beyond performance. Working with trainers and stunt coordinator Clayton Barber, the actors studied the movements and exchanges that defined the original contests. Joseph said the choreography drew closely from the actual fights, requiring repeated takes and considerable physical discipline.
“We put the time in,” Joseph emphasized.
The physical contrast between Best and Amin Joseph as Sonny Liston gives their confrontation additional meaning. They are not simply opposing athletes but men arriving at the same historical moment from profoundly different worlds.
As explored in TheFilmGordon’s feature Becoming Muhammad Ali: The Greatest Reveals His Story, Ali’s transformation extended beyond athletic achievement into questions of identity, faith and cultural independence. Liston’s presence makes that journey more complicated, representing an earlier generation’s struggle for recognition.
The emotional energy of Amin Joseph as Sonny Liston prevents their rivalry from becoming merely another celebration of Ali’s inevitable triumph.
The Love That Reveals Sonny
Some of Joseph’s most important discoveries came far from the ropes. As Geraldine Liston, Erica Tazel offers the champion something his public life rarely did: a relationship in which his guarded exterior can begin to fall away.
Joseph described Tazel as “masterful,” praising the quiet strength and grace she brought to a character required to love a man still struggling to understand his own pain.
For Amin Joseph as Sonny Liston, that relationship becomes the emotional foundation of the performance. Geraldine must recognize both the formidable champion and the wounded individual living beneath his reputation.
“You often hurt the people that are closest to you,” Joseph observed, recognizing how unresolved pain can affect those who offer us love.
Joseph believes Tazel’s performance makes Liston’s vulnerability believable. Her Geraldine possesses the strength to confront his emotional defenses while offering the acceptance he has spent much of his life seeking.
The intimacy of Amin Joseph as Sonny Liston reveals a different kind of courage. The heavyweight who could intimidate opponents with a glance must confront the considerably more difficult task of allowing another person to see his weaknesses.
Reclaiming a Boxing Legend
There is also a personal history informing Joseph’s work. Raised in Harlem, he grew up surrounded by the cultural memory of boxing greats. Stories of Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis and Floyd Patterson lived in neighborhood conversations, the Apollo Theater and the streets around 125th Street.
“These stories are inside of me,” Joseph said, describing his connection to the athletes whose accomplishments helped define generations of Black American life.
For Joseph, portraying Liston represents an opportunity for history to reconsider a man remembered chiefly for the moments he lost and to recognize the life he endured. His performance asks audiences to look beyond the familiar account of Ali’s victories and consider the champion who helped make those moments historic.
The production itself places that encounter within a larger portrait of Ali’s extraordinary evolution. As detailed in Prime Video’s official overview of The Greatest, the eight-episode series explores both the public achievements and private experiences that shaped the boxing icon.
The significance of Amin Joseph as Sonny Liston lies in restoring complexity to a figure frequently denied it. Liston cannot be separated from his ferocity, contradictions or losses. Nor should he be confined to them.
Joseph’s interpretation offers something rarer than a convincing boxing performance: an opportunity to see a familiar figure with new understanding, compassion and respect.
History may forever remember the man who defeated Sonny Liston. Through Joseph’s remarkable performance, The Greatest asks audiences to remember Sonny Liston, too.
All eight episodes of The Greatest premiere Wednesday, November 4, 2026, on Prime Video.
Related Reading: TheFilmGordon Weekly | October 30, 2026
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