WATCHING THE GRANDSON FIGHT
ON December 11, 21-year-old Nico Ali Walsh won a majority decision over Reyes Sanchez on the undercard of Vasiliy Lomachenko vs Richard Commey at Madison Square Garden.
I was a guest at the wedding decades ago when Nico’s parents got married. And I knew his grandfather well. Nico’s grandfather was Muhammad Ali.
Nico grew up watching videos of fights with Muhammad by his side. “His favorite fighter to watch,” Nico remembers, “was himself.” And while people who lived through Ali’s glory years were saddened by Muhammad’s physical decline, Nico had a different perspective.
“My grandfather was having physical problems by the time I was born,” Nico recalls. “Slow, soft-spoken; that was how I was used to seeing him. That was the only Muhammad Ali I knew. So his condition wasn’t as hard for me to accept as it was for some people. In fact, I remember watching tapes of him when he was young and saying to myself, ‘Wow! Who is that guy?’”
Nico had his first amateur fight at age nine and participated in close to 30 bouts over the course of 10 years. Then he decided to try his hand at professional boxing, which led to a
