Daughters of Ali and Frazier spice up fight countdown

John Phillips

Laila Ali wants everyone to know that her boxing career is not just about trading on her legendary father's name.

Of course, she is trading on his name and will continue to do so on June 8 when she fights Joe Frazier's daughter, Jacqui, who also knows how to cash in on her father's fame.

Ali admits that she has been able to command the attention and an undisclosed amount of money because she is Muhammad Ali's daughter.

But she says she has been on the covers of countless magazines and appeared on television shows and has plenty of endorsement deals, so if that was all she wanted, "it already would have been done. The fuss would have been over."

"People seem to forget that I am Muhammad Ali's daughter and boxing is in my blood," the 23-year-old said on Friday at a sparsely-attended news conference to promote her bout with Frazier-Lyde on the Oneida Nation's Native American reservation in upstate New York.

"People look at me and just don't understand why such a pretty person would want to box. I like to fight.

"There's something in me that's making me want to fight," she said.

BLOOD LUST

"I get a thrill from beating somebody up," she said. "I can talk about all this love and all this other garbage, but a fighter doesn't stop when they see blood. It makes you want to keep going."

The long-anticipated fight has been billed as a grudge match between two famous families, whose feud goes back 30 years to the first Ali-Frazier fight on March 8, 1971.

The three fights those warriors had -- Ali won two of them -- have gone down among the great rivalries of sport.

In those days, Ali was the pioneer of sporting hype. He taunted and teased Frazier unmercifully and the two nearly came to blows at least once outside the ring.

They did not bury the hatchet for nearly three decades until Ali apologised last month.

But, of course, promoters being promoters, the idea was hatched that the daughters would carry on the feud, even though it was supposed to have been laid to rest.

What started out as hype, however, just might be real.

It appears that Laila Ali and Frazier-Lyde do not much care for each other.

In part, Ali resents the 39-year-old Frazier-Lyde's indecision about whether she really wants to fight and she reprimanded her for that on Friday.

"That's disrespectful to me and any other boxer out there to say you don't know whether you want to box. All she does is run off at the mouth," Ali said.

If the truth be told, Frazier-Lyde -- a Philadelphia lawyer -- has a tendency to shift into verbal high gear with the emphasis often on speed rather than content.

But she did manage to tell Ali in a few thousand or so words to lighten up and feel the love and fun of boxing.

Muhammad's daughter, though, took exception to Frazier-Lyde pointing out Ali's time spent on the canvas.

"Lots of people have been dropped. It's about getting up," Ali said about being knocked down in one of her fights.

"What happened to the girl when I got up. I whupped that butt."

And she promised to do the same to Frazier-Lyde.

NO ARTISTIC PROMISES

Whatever the outcome, the fight does not promise to be particularly artistic.

Both women are novices. Joe's daughter, who has given him three grandchildren, has a record of 7-0 against opponents designed to build that record. Ali is 9-0 against similar opposition, save one.

The exception was on the undercard of the Mike Tyson-Andrew Golota fiasco in October.

Ali looked amateurish and tentative in that bout. Yet, with her sleepy-eyed father looking on from ringside, she received a gift-wrapped decision after six rounds.

Ali insists she is going to continue to fight after her bout with Frazier-Lyde.

But she says she will know when to quit and is mindful of, but not frightened by, the possibility she could suffer brain damage of the sort that has afflicted her legendary father for years as a result of boxing.

"I am not going to fight as long as my father fought," she said. "If it ever got to the point where I got beat up in the head like that I wouldn't box."