President Obama on Muhammad Ali: "He'll Always Be The Greatest"

President Barack Obama made two videos this week. 

Both were meant to capture moments in history, but one really stands out as full of emotion, celebrating someone who changed the world.

No - not his endorsement of Hillary Clinton, though it was a video marking a historic moment as she is on the precipice of being the first woman to officially be the presidential nominee of a major political party in the United States.

It is the video he made in the White House celebrating the life of Muhammad Ali, who died last week.

“This week we lost an icon, somebody who was a personal hero of mine, somebody who ended up transforming not just the world of sports but the world as a whole,” Obama said, speaking from the Oval Office. “The Greatest. The Champ. Muhammad Ali.

“This week we are seeing the incredible outpouring of love, the testimony to the impact that he had as an athlete in the ring, as someone who was willing to speak out on issues of social justice at a time when they were not popular. Somebody who ended up becoming an ambassador not just on behalf of one of the world’s great religions but someone who sought to bridge a relationship of peace and understanding between religions.”

Obama described Ali as “a person for African-Americans who liberated their minds, recognizing that they could be proud of who they were and also that they could be pretty and tough at the same time.”

He said that he grew up watching Ali, having his identity shaped by what the boxer had accomplished.

Obama said it’s been one of the great blessings of his life to have gotten to know the Champ.

“It was later in life,” Obama said. “He had already been stricken with Parkinson’s, and so sometimes it was difficult for him to talk, move, and yet the incredible gestures of love and support that he showed me was one of the  great blessings of my life.”

Obama then walked into the dining room off the Oval Office to talk about two items he says he has kept with him every day since he entered the White House.

The first is a book: "GOAT. The Greatest of All Time: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali," published by Taschen, which also made the video and posted it to YouTube.

Obama said that Ali sent the book to him through a mutual friend.

"These are not things that I put away somewhere and then just take out, these are things that I’ve been living with every single day that I’ve been here in the White House as a reminder of everything that Muhammad Ali stood for.

“He wanted me to have it and you know what I learned was that he was rooting for me the whole time I was running,” Obama said.

He opened the book to the iconic picture of Ali standing over Sonny Liston.

Obama said it was a picture he kept above his desk when he was first running for the U.S. Senate.

“Nobody thought that Ali could defeat Liston,” Obama says. “I was a big underdog when I was running for the U.S. Senate. Nobody expected me to win. Every day when I was out there campaigning or making calls and people would say, 'What’s your name again? How do you pronounce that?' I could come back to the office and see the champ and remember he shocked the world and maybe I could, too.”

When he was elected to the Senate, Obama brought the picture to Washington.

“I always treasure this because it just reminded me that nothing is impossible,” he said. “If you put in the work and you believe in yourself, you never know what might happen.”

Obama also keeps a pair of Ali’s boxing gloves, signed by the Champ.

"It’s self-explanatory,” he said. “Because although I don’t know how good a boxer I am, I have had to slug it out a bit here in Washington. There are times where I’ve been the underdog, and just like the champ there are times where I’ve been beat up a little bit and had to come back.

“That sense of resilience, that’s what these boxing gloves represent to me.”

Obama said one of the things that made Ali special was that it is rare when someone captures the imagination of the entire world.

“It’s even rarer when that figure does so by being open and funny and generous and courageous.

“He was one of a kind and, in my book, he’ll always be The Greatest.”