Sharon Stone met Muhammad Ali when she was 17. She was in the Miss Pennsylvania pageant and Ali was in Hershey, Pennsylvania, when Stone was there and she met him. And then Ali called her father and offered her a part in his film that he was making (The Greatest). The late boxing champ predicted movie stardom while her father was skeptical. Sharon Stone's father said, ''She is not going to be in film.'' Ali told her father, ''You may think that she is not, but she is. You cannot hide that girl under a bushel basket. Her light is too bright.".
The film's theme song "The Greatest Love of All", which was written and recorded to be the movie's main theme, is sung by crooner George Benson, and is played during the opening credits of this movie.
Final theatrical feature film directed by director Tom Gries. He passed away over four months before the movie's May 1977 release.
Paul Winfield who plays the draft lawyer, went on to play Muhammad Ali's promotion manager Don King in Tyson (1995).
According to Ernest Borgnine in his biography, there was a strong relationship which rose between him and Cassius Clay during the shooting. Muhammad Ali cried when he saw Borgnine's character weep during one scene.