Before he talked with his grandfather, Nico Ali Walsh was at a crossroads.
Around the tiꦅme of his freshman year of high school, Nico, the grandson of Muhammad Ali, was unsure if he wanted to continue boxing. He had wet his feet in his grandfather’s profession through various amateur and charity tournaments, but needed to decide if he wanted to pursue it as a career.
When Nico and his family started out on one of their regular visits to his grandfather’s home in Scottsdale, Ariz., he hoped Ali would talk him🔯 out of it. He was seeking his grandfather’s guidanceꦑ at a time when Nico felt boxing had become difficult and wanted to quit. And he was hoping his legendary relative would echo his sentiment and steer him away from it.
Nico’s mother, Rasheda Ali, was not particularly fond of the idea of Nico following her father’s calling. She assumed, and hoped, her father would tell Nico that there were other choices, that there were othe🌺r oppo🌞rtunities outside of the ring, that it wasn’t for him.
But when Ali saw the passion his grandson held for boxing, combined with the work ethic he was w⛦illing to exhibit, the answers his lineage had hoped he would provide didn’t arrive.
“I was like, ‘Daddy, what are you doing?’ My facial expression is like ‘Daddy, what are you doing? Why are you encouraging him to box?’ ” Rasheda told The Post. “I literally was telling hi♓m ‘Stop, stop. Stop talking.’🧜”
Pretty quickly, however, Rasheda realized the special connection boxing provided between her father and her son. Ali was enthralled by his grandson’s interest and wantedᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ to help Nico spark his career. ⛄;
“That just lit a fire in me,” Ni🌜co told The Post, “to keep going, keep go൲ing, keep going.”
And just like that, another Ali boxing career ꦇtook wing.&🙈nbsp;
The importance of New York
Rasheda, Ali’s daughter with his second wife, Belinda Boyd (later Khalilahಞ Ali), married Robert Walsh, a renowned chef. They raised Nico and his brother, Biaggio, bot♒h of whom have studied at UNLV, in their Las Vegas home, making their regular visits to Ali’s home in Scottsdale easy.
Nico, just 21 years old, turned pro in June, signing with Top Rank before his professi🎃onal debut in August. A middleweight, he is 2-0 to sta🌜rt his career, with both victories via KO.
On Saturday, 40 years to the day after Ali’s last professional fight (a loss to Trevor Berbick in The Bahamas), Nico will help welcome boxing back to a venue that was home to many of his grandfather’s greatest moments, Madison Square Garden. Ali’s first two fights against Joe Frazier, including “The Fight of the Century,” took place at the Mecca of Boxing, but it has been nearly two years since there boxing has been featured in MSG’s “Big Ro🌞om.”
Nico will be the first fight on the Vasiliy Lomachenko-Richard Commey main card, squaring off with Reyes Sanchez. O💦n Wednesday, Nico received a tour and underwent a light workout at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn. The famous gym was of🅠ten Ali’s choice when he trained in New York. Ali (then still going by the name Cassius Clay) trained at Gleason’s before his first bout with Sonny Liston in 1964. In that bout, in Miami Beach, Ali “shook up the world” and upset Liston to win his first title.
Before arriving in Brooklyn, Nico got a behind-the-scenes MSG tour, seeing his grandfathe♒r’s posters and the scale that Ali used t🐼o weigh in when he fought at the Garden.
“It was amazing, it’s like a museum,” Nico said. “You’re seeing stuff from the 1800s still standing in the museum. Just being able to fight there — what an hꦍonor. It’s every boxer’s dream.”
Ali as boxer vs. Ali as ‘poppy’
Despite being a heavy underdog against Liston, Ali engaged in his famous trash t🦩alk and taunts beforehꦯand. He called Liston “the big ugly bear” and turned the pre-fight weigh-in into a circus, shouting at Liston, “You’re scared, chump!” and “Someone is going to die at ringside tonight!”
Nico didn’t know this side of Aღli, the boxer, however. He knew him as “poppy,” as the soft-spoken, warm, funny, “teddy bear,” a side he recognized most didn’t get to see. When he would watch videos of his loud, brash grandfather, he was shocked.&ꩵnbsp;
“Completely hard to believe it was the same guy,” Nico said. “It was funny, though. I could see he never lost his sense of humor. He was still making jokes when I knew him in his older age. S♑eeing him talk like that and talk that loud, and talk that fast, it was something.”
It’s not a 🔜side of his grandfather that Nico thinks he has to professionally emulate.
“It’s very interesting because my grandfather had to talk,” Nico said. “He had to sell his fights, whereas my grandfather made it ea🐈sy for me to sell my fights. My grandfather is selling my fights for me, because of the name. All I gotta do is work hard and show my dedication and my ability and that sells the fi👍ght. I don’t have to be a braggadocious, loud guy like he was.”
Nico is trained by SugarH🦹ill Steward, who also trains heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury. His promotion is handled by Top Rank, whose CEO is 90-year-old Bob Arum — the promoter of 27 of Ali’s fights.
“I’ve known his mother since she was a little girl,” Arum told♔ The Post. “For me to promote him, to promౠote the son of Rasheda and the grandson of Muhammad, is something that I never would have believed and it’s a rare, rare thing to have happened.”
Nico and Ali bonded over watching Ali’s old fights and press conferences, since they were both watching ꧑their favorite fighter. Nico showed his grandfather clips of his training and watched his grandfather’s face light up, and the two could spend hours together.
Rasheda said Nico had the kind of relationship with Ali she wished she could have had with her father at Nico’s age. When her parents divorced, Rasheda’s grandparents took on the role of ♏raising her.
“At a young age, when my dad was trying to find himself and the young Muhammad Ali, the young father Muhammad Ali, he wasn’t around a lot,” Rasheda said. “He was out there in the world, he was changing the world, he was, literally, fighting the government. He was in the ring. He was a busy man as a young father. That took a lot of time away from us, as little kids, we were todd෴lers when my dad was making a name for himself. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my dad always there to tuck me in at night.”
She had a hard time grasping that Ali, who died in 2016, was not just her father, but the world’s father, that she had to share him. They rekindled their relationship when she was in her 20s, and they developed a spiritual connection through Ali’s battlꦕe with Parkinson’s Disease, a cause for which Rasheda is now an advocate.
Like grandfather, like grandson
Offspring o🦋f great athletes ofte♒n shy away from entering the same field or living up to a legacy. Not Nico. He wants to tackle it head-on.
“I’✅m not gonna be able to escape it, so even if I wasn’t in boxing, if I was a tennis player or if I was a chess player, I would stillﷺ have the pressures of being the grandson of the greatest,” Nico said. “They would find ways of comparing me to him. I have to accept it, I have to embrace it. When I was younger, I hated it. I’m still trying to embrace it myself. But that’s what it’s all about — I have to run towards it because I have no other option.”
Nico said he is strongly aware of what his last name entails. He knows his career has perhaps been fast-tracked and ꦦhe has been the beneficiary of his last name. He also knows he will always get the best versions of his opponents, because everyone wants to say, “I beat an Ali.”
Mainly, Nico knows what his last name, and grandfather’s legacy, mean out🍨side of the ring.
If he could go back and share another conversation with his grandfather, it wouldn’t be about boxing. It would be about his life as an activist, how he inspired others and how he could help solve soci𒊎ety’s modern ills. He’s particularly interested in systemic racism and the African-American community.
“I was very young, but even as a little kid my mom was talking about what it meant to be black and proud, or proud to be black,” Nico said. “And I’m mixed. And I might not even look like I’m half black. But my mom is black. I was just✨ raised to believe that.”
Nico ꧅has also done work with St. Baldrick’s Founda𝓰tion, a non-profit that raises funds for pediatric cancer, in addition to helping out lower-income faculty at his old high school and local charities.
From his grandfather, Nico learned how to love life, developed a unique sense of humor and discovered the value of bringing smiles to other people’s faces. Rasheda remembered taking her father, later in his life, for a drive to get him out of the house. Of course, Ali promptly lowe♉red his window on the trip to make faces at other drivers and get a rise out of them, just because.
Both Nico and Rasheda recognize he can’t match what Ali did in the ring. Ali possessed athletic ability n𓆉ever seen before. But they both also know that boxing was just a platform for Ali to carry out his greater goals.
And that’s exactly 📖what Nico strives🌺 to mirror.
“He was like none other,” Rasheda said. “Nico saw that. Growing up as a kid he saw how his grandfather was. I think the best thing that Nico could try to do is emulate tha🍸t part of Muhammad Ali. Not so much the Muhammad Ali in the boxing ring, because we already know he can’t duplicate that. But what he can do is be an inspiration to people and be the humanitarian and the ambassador of peace that my dad was. I think Nico has physically seen my dad become this incredible inspiration first-hand, and he loved that about his gr🧜andfather, how he put smiles on so many people’s faces. I think Nico would love to do that for others.”
