April 03, 2024
Geoff Burke/USA TODAY SPORTS
Eight world champion boxers, including Bernard Hopkins, above, are featured in 'In the Company of Kings.' The documentary journeys across Philadelphia and out to Schuylkill County to visit Muhammad Ali's training camp.
Las Vegas and New York may be the destinations for marquee boxing matches, but if you ask filmmaker Steve Read, the sport's home is in Philadelphia.
The proof is in his documentary "In the Company of Kings," which takes places largely in the city and features some of its champions. The film is narrated by producer Robert Douglas, a Liverpool, England, native who grew up admiring American boxers across the pond. Douglas moved to North Philadelphia in 1988 and spent many years there, and brought Read, a fellow Brit, back to capture the birthplace of Joe Frazier and so many other heavy hitters.
"Boxing comes from urban distress, from tough streets," Read told an audience at PFS East on Monday night at the movie's U.S. premiere. "And that's portrayed in the film, to show just where these great fighters come from.
"It's about struggle and hope, and my hope is that you love this film."
The movie begins from a place of personal pain, as Douglas describes the racism he encountered in England as the child of an African father and white mother. Watching great Black fighters like Muhammad Ali dominate in the ring helped him feel less afraid, and lent him fortitude through a more recent assault that left him half-blind.
"These boxers used to walk me through the school gates as a young boy," Douglas said at the premiere. "School can be daunting when you come up a different color. You've got to have a bit more armor around yourself."
The film follows several people in Ali's orbit, including South Philly-native Tim Witherspoon. The two-time world heavyweight champion was a sparring partner for Ali toward the end of the legend's career. The pair regularly trained at Ali's Deer Lake training camp, nestled in the woods of the Schuylkill County town.
The crew journeys back to Deer Lake, but it also visits several neighborhoods in Philadelphia with Bernard Hopkins. Before "The Executioner" won world championships in two different weight classes, he was a kid in the Raymond Rosen housing projects of North Philly. He later served time at Graterford Prison, where he boxed in a state rehabilitative program that he says helped him "turn his life around."
"In the Company of Kings" checks in with eight former world champions, but it also looks at the future of boxing through an an up-and-coming Philly boxer. Tyhler Williams, a welterweight fighter with an 8-0 record, takes the crew around his old training grounds at the Rock Ministries of Philadelphia, a church that offers free boxing lessons in Kensington.
"Growing up in this neighborhood, I could say it's a good thing and a bad thing," Williams says in the documentary. "A good thing because nobody's going to be made of what I'm made of. Once you make it out of Philadelphia, you can make it out of anywhere."
The film features additional interviews with Larry Holmes (nicknamed the "Easton Assassin" for the Pennsylvania town where he grew up), Eddie Mustafa Muhammad and Earnie Shavers, who died in 2022. It will be available to rent on digital platforms starting April 30.
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