Nico Ali Walsh is following in his grandfather’s steps in standing up for something he believes in.
The grandson of Muhammad Ali has taken a stand against the Zuffa Boxing-backed legislation known as the “Ali Revival Act”. If Zuffa have their way and the Act is passed as law, then they will be able to implement a Universal Boxing Organization [UBO] in the sport, controlling promotion, contacts, rankings and titles all under one roof.
Ali Walsh believes this takes away fighters rights and creates a system where the organization has power over all who are signed to it. Because of this, Ali Walsh has pleaded his case in the US Senate to have the Ali Revival Act modified or dissolved, and is continuing his push against it. He believes he is making progress.
“Because of the meetings that we are having almost every single day with these senators and how shocked they are to see how the Revival Act and how the Ali Act is affecting the current state of boxing today, the fact that they’re so shocked, I’m absolutely certain that some changes are going to be made,” Ali Walsh told BoxingScene. “If not, the Revival Act will not be made into law at all.”
This goes far beyond fighters’ rights for Ali Walsh. It not only affects him as a professional boxer, but the legislation is named after his grandfather, something Ali Walsh is certain The Greatest would have been against.
“I’m not someone who’s big into politics. This is my first time even speaking on matters like this,” he said. “The reason that I’m doing it obviously is because it’s my name. It’s affecting my legacy. It’s affecting me as a fighter. They’re using my grandfather’s name to benefit themselves when they’re not benefiting the fighters, which was my grandfather’s whole point to begin with. That was the reason that the Ali Act was put into place.
“You’re putting his name on an act against something that he would have fought against. So it’s not something I’m happy with.”
Although Ali Walsh may be against what Zuffa Boxing are trying to implement now, that was not always the case.
“When I first heard that Zuffa was coming into boxing, I’m not even gonna lie to you, I thought it was amazing when I heard that a new promoter was going to be coming into boxing and benefiting the fighters,” Ali Walsh said. “I thought that was amazing. I said there’s room for everybody. There’s enough cake for everybody in the sport.
“But once I started actually reading the Revival Act, you start noticing that a lot of the stuff that they’re saying, again, doesn’t make sense.”
Ali Walsh doesn’t believe it is all bad in the Ali Revival Act, highlighting the health benefits and minimum pay as something that should still be implemented.
“The fighter-pay stuff, that’s great. The minimum pay for fighters, that’s cool,” he said. “The health benefits is huge. I love that. That’s something that could be added to the current Ali Act. You don’t need to strip our rights and our freedom that the fighters currently have to add health benefits. You could do that right now by revising the current Ali Act.”
However, what Ali Walsh sees coming with the potential passing of the Ali Revival Act is Zuffa taking full control over the sport.
“They want Zuffa to be boxing,” Ali Walsh claimed. “They want Zuffa to be the main hub of boxing and everybody who passes through boxing has to pass through Zuffa. It would become a monopoly. That’s exactly what a monopoly is.
“It sounds amazing that we just want to make things simple. We want everybody to come through one system. We want one champion. We want one ranking system. It sounds great. It sounds easy to digest for the average viewer, but it strips us fighters of our rights and it strips us of our leverage. If we have to go through one system, if one system controls the rankings, the titles, the promotion, the visibility, then we have no choice but to go through that system.”
Few fighters have taken a stand against the Ali Revival Act like Ali Walsh has. However, he warned his fellow boxers that if Zuffa has their way they could turn boxing into the UFC, where fighter pay is considerably less.
“The truth is, if you know what’s going on, you will side with me because as a fighter you wouldn’t want what Zuffa is pushing to be in boxing,” added Ali Walsh. “It would absolutely change the sport. It would make our sport unrecognizable. It would turn our sport into the UFC.
“The way UFC fighters are at the height of their careers wanting boxing fights, we would be those same people in a few years down the line where we would be complaining about money and we would be the same guys as the UFC fighters, where we would be just stuck in a system where we’re not getting compensated for the blood, sweat and tears that we’re putting in.”
