Laila Ali is a former boxer and the daughter of the famed world champion and entrepreneur Muhammad Ali. She was named Super Middleweight Champion by the International Boxing Association in 2002 and by the International Women's Boxing Federation in 2005. She has three stepchildren and two children.
I grew up in Los Angeles, California, in a neighborhood called Hancock Park, where my parents were married. When I think about my childhood, what stands out most are the summers, when my dad would pile me and my six sisters into his brown Rolls-Royce and take us for a ride on Wilshire Boulevard with the top down. He'd pull over to the side of the road to give homeless people money or to sign autographs. He loved to be noticed. I remember not really understanding why people loved him so much but knowing that he was very special. My mom has always been a very sophisticated, impeccably dressed woman — very gorgeous. In my eyes, she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I remember being so proud because of her beauty and poise. When she'd come to school for parent-teacher conferences or to pick me up, all the heads would turn. My mom's a great person, not just a beautiful one. She has so much class and treats everyone with kindness. I have always been very proud of that.
I remember thinking that both of my parents were special because of the way they treated people. My father used to say, "Never step on others to get ahead, and treat all people the same." Even though my dad is one of the most famous men in the world, he has always thought of himself as being on the same level as everyone else, no matter what their position in life. So I grew up like that. To me, everybody's the same, even celebrities. When your dad's Muhammad Ali and such a great man for what he stood up for and for being his own person, a man who has had a lot of what he worked for taken away and survived … nothing tops that in my book. My dad is Muslim, and there was a real emphasis on religion in our family. We were also taught pride, humility, and confidence and to be thankful for everything that we had. A lot of times people who grow up privileged see the people around them not necessarily treating everybody with kindness and respect. But in my family, that wasn't the case.
As a kid, I always wanted to grow up fast. As a teenager, I couldn't wait to be independent. I wanted to start working. I wanted to move out of the house. Being Muhammad Ali's daughter was a challenge because I didn't always know who my real friends were, and there were always different people around me. I struggled to find my own identity. Sometimes I felt teachers gave me a harder time because they wanted to make it a point not to give me an easier time. I never wanted special treatment, so I tried to keep who my father was from people as long as I could. When I enrolled in school, I used my mom's last name, which was Anderson at the time. That's how much I wanted to be on an even playing field with everybody else.
I never played team sports as a kid. I did well in PE class, but I wasn't interested in team sports. I wish I'd participated in sports earlier on because then I would have discovered that I was an athlete at a younger age. That's why now I tell parents that sometimes you have to make your kids do certain things so they can figure out whether or not they even like them. If you leave it up to them, they'll say, "No, I don't want to do that. I don't like that," without even trying it. Who knows? If I'd just tried when I was younger, I might have done something other than boxing. But, in any case, once I discovered women's boxing, I was hooked.
I was seventeen going on eighteen at the time, and I was visiting my best friend and her father. We were getting ready to watch a Mike Tyson fight, and some women came on before the prefight coverage. I was amazed when I saw them. I didn't know women boxed, and I wasn't prepared for it. As soon as I saw them, I thought, "Oh my God! I can do that!" I got so excited, and my friend said, "Laila, you could do it, too!" And her dad said, "Yeah, right, Laila. Them girls will knock you out!" because I was a pretty girl, and he was looking at how rough and tough they were. I remember it was Christy Martin who was fighting. I didn't know who she was at the time. All I knew was that she was a tough brawler who was fighting with a bloody face. But still, I was so drawn to it. I just wanted to do it. I immediately responded, and I realized right then and there, "I can do it. I can win."
The seed was planted. I kept thinking about it and also wondering, "What would everybody think, being that I'm Muhammad Ali's daughter?" At that time I had a little business called Laila's Nail Studio, and I had a full clientele. I was in school at Santa Monica College and planning on transferring to USC for business. I was thinking, "How am I just going to start boxing — you know, drop everything and start boxing?" I knew it would take a lot of work and there would be many eyes on me. I knew how big a deal it would be to have Muhammad Ali's daughter boxing. I never really wanted to be a public person. I never wanted to live the kind of life my dad lived.
It took me about a year to finally make the decision to go ahead and do it. I'm a planner, and boxing had never been in the plan. Going to school was the plan. Having my own business was the plan. To think about changing everything I'd been doing threw me off course. It was a hard decision to make, but I ended up following my heart. I stopped worrying about what everybody else was going to think. I didn't get any help. I didn't go to my dad and say, "Dad, what should I do? How should I do this?" My thinking was more like "I'm going to do this on my own, and I'm going to see if I like it. I'm going to see if I have talent." I didn't want to embarrass myself or my family. If I didn't have what it took, then I wasn't going to do it. I found a trainer, and things took off from there. I trained about three hours every day, and I absolutely loved it, which kept me going, because I was also in school and had the nail salon. I went to the gym at the end of the day. I had to get there by eight o'clock, and I was tired, but what gave me energy was looking forward to what I was going to learn and how I could get better. I fell deeply in love with boxing. I'd never ever been as passionate about anything as I was about boxing.
When my mom finally found out I was boxing, she was positive. She didn't say, "Oh great!" but her response was more like "Oh, really? Is that what you want to do?" But she told me after the fact, after I'd been doing it for a while, that she'd been thinking, "Oh, God, here we go again," because she'd had to sit there through my dad's fights, scared and on edge until the end. But my mom is very spiritual, and she understands that you have to let your kids do what they want to do and support them. She knows that I'm very hardheaded and that I was going to do it regardless, so she supported me. My dad found out through people I was training with, and I knew he didn't like it. When we had our first conversation about it, he was kind of quiet. He said, "So what are you going to do if you get in the ring and you get knocked in your head and you're dizzy and you don't know where you are? What are you going to do if you get knocked down and you're on the canvas and people are judging you?" Indirectly, he said everything he could possibly say to try to talk me out of it, but I told him, "I'm going to do the same thing you did. I'm going to get up and keep fighting." I felt like no matter what happened, I was going to be able to handle it and deal with it.
I won all of my fights — twenty-four in total, and twenty-one of them were knockouts. My first fight was in October of 1999, and I remember feeling good but at the same time disappointed that it ended so soon. The girl just wasn't a good opponent, and I didn't know what to expect from her. Most fighters are just happy to win, but I wanted more of a competitive fight after all my hard work and training. My manager at the time told me, "You won. That's all that matters." My response was "Yes, but I wanted to do a little more."
My most memorable fight was against Jackie Frazier, Joe Frazier's daughter. We fought eight two-minute rounds. We weren't fighting for a championship, but we both wanted to win so badly. We had our fans there, which is another thing I liked about the fight, because usually it was just me that everyone was cheering for and nobody would know who the other girl was. But people knew Jackie Frazier, and you had your Frazier fans and your Ali fans. The energy was great, and Jackie was a tough girl. I had the flu before the fight, so by the third round, I was exhausted and ready to fall out. I was expecting to have been done with her by then. It was a good fight, and in hindsight, I wish we'd had a rematch. At the time, I didn't want one because I was adamant about fighting girls with championship belts, and she didn't have one. But if I'd fought her a second time, I would have been able to stop her instead of just winning, and we would have made some good money, too. But at the time, I just wanted to prove that I was serious and not just Muhammad Ali's daughter, a girl trying to ride off her dad's name.
When thinking about my strengths as a boxer, the first thing I have to mention is my confidence, which I get from my dad. Confidence can take you far in life, especially when it comes to boxing, but it's not confidence alone. You have to have what it takes to go with it. I have confidence plus technically well-rounded skills: a good jab, strong movement in the ring, and an evil streak. For instance, I'm going to try to stop you. I'm not trying to go the distance. Before the fight, I'm going to tell you, "You're going to get knocked out. This is not going to go to the judges." Some people consider this talking smack, but I'm just telling the truth about what I came to do, and you can be sure that I believe every word of it. There was no chance that I was not going to win — ever. It was about getting in there and performing the way I wanted to perform. It's just like with a basketball player, only he says, "I want to run the court this way and make this basket from this corner." I didn't just want to win. I wanted to win in a beautiful manner.
I really had my own style. Some people saw similarities between my dad's style and my own in terms of my movement in the ring or my jab, but he was more of a boxer and I was more of a fighter. You have to be supercompetitive, especially in boxing. One person is going to win and the other is going to lose, and for me, losing was not an option. It's not like in basketball and football, where you know you're going to lose sometimes, and that's acceptable. For me it was like "I'm going to stay undefeated." I looked at every opponent like "It's just me and her. She has two hands, I have two hands, and I'm going to come out on top."
A lot of people don't understand my passion for boxing. They say things like "So you really like to box?" And I say, "Yes!" but it's something that can't really be explained. Don't get me wrong: Even though I love to box, I don't encourage others to do it. I wouldn't want my kids to box, and when young girls come up to me and say they want to box, I don't say, "Oh yeah, this is what you do. I'm going to hold your hand and show you the game." But speaking for myself, I did what I wanted to do and what I love to do. It's a real sport, just like any other, and the beauty of actual boxing is being able to stand directly in front of someone and hit her without her being able to hit you back. You have to calculate how close you can stand exactly on the right angle to make your move. Many people don't realize that boxing is a thinking game.
Most women don't make a lot of money boxing. It's a dangerous sport, and there's not a big audience for it. If you want to box on the side for fun, that's one thing, but trying to make a career out of it wouldn't be my first choice for anyone. I'm always up front with people because a lot of girls think, "Look at Laila Ali. She did this. She did that." It's true, I couldn't have been successful without being a great fighter, but I also couldn't have gotten where I did without my last name. It took the two, and I try to explain that to people. This may sound crazy, but a lot of my fans never saw me box. They just like who I am and the idea that I'm a fighter, that I'm a strong woman. They think it's cool. "Oh, I love Laila Ali," they say, but they have never even seen me fight.
I stopped boxing when it wasn't fulfilling anymore, when I felt like there was nothing left, which was sad in the sense that I wasn't able to fulfill my dreams of having some great fights against some of the top contenders — against the women I felt were the most competitive boxers. Unfortunately, they didn't want to fight me, and I got tired of chasing after them. Still, boxing has opened up a lot of other opportunities for me. There really isn't anyone else out there like me. There are other female fighters, but they don't have my background. I'm not just a boxer, and I'm also not just Muhammad Ali's daughter. I worked very hard to be able to say that. When I went on Dancing with the Stars, right after my last fight, it was an opportunity to show people another side of myself. For a while, there was this stigma with being a female boxer. People used to ask me, "How come you don't have a deal with L'Oréal or Revlon?" But those companies weren't calling and offering up anything. They don't want a boxer to represent them. I really had to soften up, and Dancing with the Stars was the perfect opportunity. After that, I did American Gladiators with Hulk Hogan for two seasons and a show called Student Body, which was kind of like a Biggest Loser for kids. And then I started having kids of my own, and things kind of slowed down for me professionally.
I have always thought of myself as a nurturing person, as someone who mothers people and looks out for everyone. In fact, my friends call me "Mama Bear." I love being a mom. There's a part of me that just wants to be a housewife, because I want to raise my kids myself. So I'm conflicted when opportunities come up, and I turn down a lot of them to be able to spend time with my family, to be there for them. In terms of my career, my main focus is promoting health and wellness as well as working on licensing and branding. I have my own line of beauty care products. I am also coming out with a line of healthy salad dressings, seasonings, and marinades in 2012, and I hope to expand my company to include clothing and housewares. My products are natural, earth-friendly, and nontoxic, which is very important to me, and they are high quality and affordable.
I'm the president of the Women's Sports Foundation, which is an organization that Billie Jean King started years ago. It has become the go-to place for other girls-in-sports organizations. We uphold Title IX. We aim to empower girls and women through sports and physical activity, and to make sure they're being treated fairly. I'm passionate about young girls being involved in sports, because sports give them confidence. Sports teach discipline and give girls something productive to do with their time, and they foster friendships. Through sports, girls overcome adversity and learn how to stay fit and active. Sports also help to prevent obesity and, indirectly, teen pregnancies.
Whether it's about being a mom, a boxer, or a businessperson, you can learn something from just about everybody. I grew up following the beat of my own drum, and I didn't pay much attention to what others were doing. Now, at this stage in my life, I'm more curious about what inspires other great women. What inspires me is the feeling of accomplishment I get when I succeed at something. I may not always have energy, but the thought of how I will feel when I'm successful and have accomplished the goal I set out to accomplish usually keeps me going. There's nothing like feeling good about something you have done. Also, I'm inspired by making others happy. I'm inspired by people who not only talk the talk but walk the walk, like my parents, who are very real people. I'm very proud that I have been able to accomplish my goals. I set out to do something and I did it. I have always been that type of person — I do what I say I'm going to do, and I am proud of that.