Chris Jericho is adding a very fitting role to his resume. He has been cast as wrestling icon Gorgeous George in The Greatest, Prime Video’s new limited series on the life of Muhammad Ali, according to Deadline.
The eight-episode series drops all at once on November 4, and Jericho turns up in the fourth episode as George, the flamboyant, platinum-haired showman who was one of the biggest attractions in 1950s wrestling.
The Casting Actually Makes Perfect Sense
If you know the history, pairing a wrestler with an Ali project is more than a fun stunt. Ali openly credited Gorgeous George as a blueprint for how he carried himself. As a young Cassius Clay, he crossed paths with George at a Las Vegas radio station in 1961, where he was promoting a fight. George was there cutting a wild promo for a match that sold out the building, while Clay’s own bout down the street was barely drawing. The lesson stuck. Ali took the strutting confidence and the rhyming, crowd-baiting bravado and built one of the most famous personas in sports history around it.
So the man playing George in an authorized Ali series is a six-time world champion who has spent decades perfecting exactly that kind of over-the-top charisma. Jericho has acted plenty and fronts a band, and a peacocking heel is about as in his wheelhouse as a role can get.
About the Series
The Greatest is billed as the first authorized scripted series about Ali’s life, created and run by Ben Watkins, with Ali’s widow Lonnie Ali among the executive producers and Michael B. Jordan‘s Outlier Society producing. Newcomer Jaalen Best plays Ali, with Michael Ealy as Malcolm X. The first season runs from Ali’s 1960 Olympic gold through his 1964 heavyweight title win, which lines up neatly with the era when George’s influence on him was taking hold.
All eight episodes hit Prime Video on November 4.
Catch Jericho (and Us) at Sea
Jericho has a busy November, captaining the seventh iteration of his cruise, and we are going to be on it with him. The Stunner’s Josh Bernstein and Robert Pasbani are special guest hosts on Chris Jericho’s 2026 Rock ’N’ Wrestling Rager at Sea, his annual wrestling cruise. This year the party doubles as a live TV production, too. AEW Collision is broadcasting live from the ship, and The Stunner will be right there for it. If you want a feel for all the different hats Chris Jericho wears before the Ali series drops, the middle of the ocean is a pretty good place to start.
