EVERYTHING WE KNOW
BEFORE THE ROOM ASKS.

The pitch says one roof owns this story. Verified 2026-07-24 against primary sources: that is true for Champion and for Ali, and NOT true for Tyson. Ali clears in-house through ABG. Tyson clears through Tyson: he is alive, at the table, and papers his own deals. The concept survives intact; the paperwork map below is what makes it survive a lawyer's first question in the room.

Correction to the standing internal shorthand: "ABG owns both men" is half right. Ali yes, in-house. Tyson no: his presence at this table is a relationship and a direct deal, not house ownership. The pitch page's own phrasing ("Tyson sits at the table by direct relationship") is accurate and stays.

Two lives on one axis. Ali's lane runs gold, Tyson's runs oxblood, and the record crosses them eight documented times, from a juvenile detention hall in the Bronx to a Louisville casket. Click a crossing to read the record; the full testimony with flags follows below. This is what makes the pitch a documentary claim, not an invention.

Era truth is what separates tribute from stunt (Precedent, lesson 06). These are the verified physical facts for prompt craft and QA, including corrections to details we have been assuming. Every frame we fire should be checkable against this table at 100% crop. Thumbnails are our own approved plates placed as era anchors, not archival photographs; click to enlarge.

MUHAMMAD ALIBY ERA

1964

Miami Beach, Liston I (Feb 25). CORRECTION for our fires: not plain white and black. White trunks, black waistband, thin red side stripes, "CC" monogram on the left leg, worn only this once. Liston quits on the stool before round 7. "I shook up the world."

1965

Lewiston, the phantom punch (May 25). KO about 1:44 into round 1. The Leifer frame: white trunks, black waistband, standing over Liston, right arm cocked across the body, snarling "Get up and fight, sucker!" Dark arena, single overhead ring light.

1966-67

The peak (Astrodome vs Williams, Nov 14 1966). TKO 3 before a 35,615 indoor record; the Ali Shuffle debuts; roughly 62% of power shots landed; widely called his finest technical performance. Last pre-exile bout: Folley, Mar 22 1967.

1971-75

The trilogy and Zaire. Frazier: loses Mar 8 1971 at MSG, wins Jan 28 1974, wins the Thrilla in Manila TKO 14 (Oct 1 1975). Kinshasa, Oct 30 1974: Stade du 20 Mai, bell about 4am local for US closed circuit, ~60,000 in moonlight, rope-a-dope off slack ropes, Foreman KO'd in 8.

THE KIT

White trunks with black waistband career-long, usually Everlast on the waistband (occasionally Ampro, Spartan, Frager, Mitre, MacGregor). Motion signatures: lightning double jab, dropped hands, lean-back slips, mid-fight mouth-open taunt, the Shuffle. Robe specifics per era: UNVERIFIED, work from photo archives.

1996

Atlanta (Jul 19). Secret final torchbearer; takes the flame from Janet Evans, left arm trembling with Parkinson's, lights the fuse rocket to the cauldron. Evans: "I never cried after any of my Olympic medals, but I wanted to cry."

MIKE TYSON1985-88 PEAK

THE KIT

Plain black trunks, black low shoes, no socks, no robe: a plain white towel with a hole cut for his head, worn poncho style (at Berbick, a hotel bath towel; he said he would pay the fine from his $1.5M purse to stay in black). Brutally short Dempsey-style haircut. The spartan black honored D'Amato, dead Nov 4 1985, a year before the crown.

THE GUARD

Peek-a-boo, from D'Amato: gloves at the cheeks, elbows tight, constant bob-and-weave, numbered combinations, carried on under Kevin Rooney. This guard shape is the single most checkable Tyson likeness cue in motion.

ENTRANCE

No music, blank affect. Tyson: "My entrance made me feel like a warrior." For Spinks his chosen entrance sound was "just noise; every once in a while you hear the clanging of chains."

1986

Berbick (Nov 22), KO 2: youngest heavyweight champion ever at 20.

1988

Holmes (Jan 22): the promise kept, three knockdowns in round 4. Spinks (Jun 27): 91 seconds, 21,785 record gate, about $70M gross, 8 punches landed. Both at Convention Hall, Atlantic City.

FLAGS

Kangol as signature: UNVERIFIED (80s off-duty photos show Kangol-style caps; do not lean on it). Face tattoo is Feb 2003: any 1985-88 depiction is clean-faced. Keep the eras strictly apart; the 2026 elder carries the mark, the 1988 champion never does.

Production's map of the real pictures: who made the canon, who controls it, and how much of it already lives under the client's own roof. The short version: Getty is the single biggest door, Magnum holds Hoepker and Abbas, four estates deal direct, and MAE plus the Sports Illustrated archive make much of it in-house. Our fires synthesize era-true frames because the archive is costly per frame and closed as model input; its role is reference truth and in-campaign intercut (World II, THE VOW).

Working rule for the room: the ARCHIVE is for truth and intercut; the SYNTHESIS is for the frames history never took. Filters refuse the archive as model input anyway (Stack, section 08), which is why the pipeline was built plate-first.

Fifty-six years of legends recreated in advertising, plotted by reception. Hover any dot. The pattern is consistent enough to bet on: family in the frame, product-person truth, real bodies under digital faces, rationed voice. The full scored table follows the chart.

AI-era hardening 2024-2026: Alien Romulus's Ian Holm cameo drew "digital necromancy" criticism · the Carlin estate's suit over an unauthorized AI special ended in takedown · Tennessee's ELVIS Act and California AB 1836/2602 now require estate consent for digital replicas. ABG's rights satisfy the law; the public bar is consent plus disclosure plus taste.

Four currents cross in this exact window: boxing at its widest casual reach since the 1990s, an active Ali anniversary and content cycle, Champion rebuilding on heritage under the same roof that manages Ali, and a consent framework for AI likeness this campaign satisfies cleanly. And beneath the currents, two decades of measurable public appetite for this exact pairing. Every number below is dated.

YouTube view counts read directly from platform metadata 2026-07-24; bar lengths proportional to views. Every format clears seven figures: official archive, debate, fan edits, podcast clips. FOX's two official Tyson-mimics-Ali videos alone total 32M+. Also on record: the eWBSS lockdown simulation (Fight Night Champion, streamed on WBSS Facebook, Mar 29 2020) went Tyson by 114-111 on all three cards and drew Muhammad Ali Jr's public rebuttal; r/Boxing re-runs the debate yearly. Google Trends and TikTok counters were not retrievable on the read date: gaps, not zeros.

The pitch sells frames; this section is what the frames are for. Champion has already proven once that heat converts to revenue at brand scale, the fleece market is enormous and growing, and the next twelve months hand the campaign three dated launch windows the house itself is building.

World III's frames double as the commercial exhibit: the garment is the hero, and the $75-150 slot already has its photography.

Production truths with dated receipts from this slate's own fire ledger, drawn as the pipeline actually runs. These are the walls and lanes as tested, not as assumed; every claim carries a receipt in fires.jsonl and the run log, and the two films below are the working proof.

The plate rail above is the true-face currency the assembly spends: every frame passed the likeness gate at 100% crop. Click any plate to enlarge.

Every failure mode in the precedent record, mapped to this campaign's answer. The synthesis in one line: sell the argument, never the verdict. The Super Fight sold a verdict and the loser sued; EA sold the question and put both men on the cover. Our frames stage the meeting: the touch, never the outcome.

Eight research passes, grouped by section. Compiled 2026-07-24; load-bearing claims verified against two or more independent sources; anything that could not be verified is marked UNVERIFIED in its section. YouTube demand counts were read directly from platform metadata on the compile date.