It's hard to be humble when you are as great as I am.

Ali’s line is a deliberately comic paradox: he boasts so extravagantly that the boast itself becomes a joke about boasting. It plays on the cultural expectation that champions should be “humble,” while also asserting that extraordinary achievement can justify extraordinary self-confidence. In Ali’s public persona—built through rhymed predictions, theatrical bravado, and psychological gamesmanship—the quip functions as performance as much as confession: it entertains, disarms critics, and reinforces the mythic scale of his self-image. The humor also hints at self-awareness, suggesting he knows the tension between modesty and greatness and chooses to dramatize it rather than resolve it.