Laila Ali TALKS ABOUT Love, Muhammad Ali And Women In The Ring - celebrities - Interview

Ebony, Oct, 2001 by Aldore Collier

SHE delivers bruising and punishing blows to all comers with taunts and bravado, tie did the same, elevating it to an art form. She's undefeated at 10-0 with eight knockouts. He wasn't undefeated, but remains the champ in many hearts.

She knows she has model-like features. He told the whole world just how pretty he was.

There are numerous similarities between Muhammad Ali and his 23-year-old daughter Laila. She accepts them as her genetic legacy. He unwittingly passed on to his daughter by ex-wife Veronica a love of the punishing, exhilarating world of boxing. She is the only one of his nine sons and daughters to embrace those genes that led to the ring.

Her father's legendary status actually had nothing to do with Laila's decision to pursue a boxing career. She knows that there are millions who know every single detail of every pro fight her father fought. She never immersed herself in that sort of trivia, She has always been proud of his achievements, but he was never a boxer or legend to her--just dad.

What propelled her into the ring was the bizarre sight on the television screen when she was about to watch a Mike Tyson fight five years ago. What she saw was two women in the ring before Tyson's main event began.

"I remember thinking, `Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Women are about to fight,'" she recalls. "I had the popcorn and was getting ready to watch Mike Tyson. I was looking around like, `What's going on? Women fighting?' I was so excited I couldn't wait to see it. I was like, `I can do that.'"

Laila was 18 and running a nail salon in her native Los Angeles, but the imagery of the gloves, sweat and punches was so firmly etched into her consciousness that she immediately spun 180 degrees into another career direction. At that point, she says, the genes really kicked in. She had an indescribably magnetic attraction to her father's world. "Something in me has to do it. It's very, natural."

Laila's father, she quickly points out, would prefer that she not take on the dangerous and bruising world of boxing. Johnny McClain, her husband/manager (and former boxer himself) feels the same way. Mom Veronica Anderson was a bit more pragmatic and encouraged her to pursue whatever path gratified her most.

Even though both the men in her life worry about her, they're 100 percent supportive. "They don't want me to get hurt," she says. "When I finally put the gloves down and say, `I'm done,' all the people around me will be happy."

Long before entering the ring, Laila was a fighter, not taking anything from anybody. She says she never looked for trouble hut never did, and never will, back down. "When I was younger, I didn't know how to channel my energy correctly. And as soon us something didn't go right or somebody got in my way, I didn't have a problem fighting if I had to." Also, being the offspring of a legend made her an easy target for high school kids to see just how tough she was. They, not she, failed the test.

And she's passed every pugilistic test she's taken since. For the public, her biggest test took place last summer in upstate New York when she took on Jacqui Frazier-Lyde, the daughter of Joe Frazier, her father's most celebrated opponent during the 1970s.

That fight provided the biggest shot in the arm that women's boxing has received to date. Media credentials were requested from outlets all over the world. Some billed it as "Ali/Frazier--Generation II." No match involving women had ever garnered so much attention. Laila squeaked out an eight-round majority decision in the middleweight contest. The two women dissed each other in a way reminiscent of the way their fathers did in the early 1970s.

And even though the fight is history, Laila says there's lingering bad blood. "I don't care for Jacqui Frazier too much. We had a lot of words for each other. I really wanted to break her."

Laila severely criticized her own boxing technique in the fight, saying she let Frazier hang around too long. "I fought and didn't box. I didn't fight smart," she admits. "Usually my husband is in my corner to say, `Laila, box!' but he wasn't allowed in my corner since he was the promoter of the fight. I still put a whipping on her."

The victory turned out to be a double-edged sword for Laila. Sure, it focused record attention on the sport. But she recalls that some female boxers who've toiled in obscurity for years resent the fact that she is being held up as the unofficial spokeswoman after only 10 matches.

"There are a lot of fighters out there who don't think it's fair. Some of them say, `She gets all the attention and she's only doing it because of who her father is,' which is ignorant," she says. "But at the same time, I do understand how they feel. But they have to understand that not everyone can do what I do. It's not easy being a beginner and having so much attention and so much pressure."

One of her biggest boxing-related peeves is constantly being called "champion" by journalists although she hasn't won a championship title--yet. "People are calling me champion even though I don't have a belt yet. I'm the best at the level where I am. I want to win a belt and defend it a few times."