His grandfather, Muhammad Ali, was renowned as “The Greatest of All Time” but Biaggio Ali Walsh is a different kind of fighter.
He is pursuing a career in mixed martial arts and will compete in PFL again on Friday but rather than trying to emulate his grandfather’s bombastic rhetoric Ali Walsh is taking his development in MMA step by step.
“I got into this sport just wanting to see how far I could go with it,” he told Sky Sports. “So many different martial arts play a part in a fight and I just loved the idea that a fight’s a fight, you use whatever martial art works best for you.”
Ali Walsh got off to an inauspicious start, beginning with a humbling defeat. “My first fight was for Fusion Fight League and that was in Montana,” he recalled. “I fought a really big dude, a big bald guy.
“I dropped him like twice and this dude got up. I heard the Terminator theme song in my head. I’m like, ‘what, this dude won’t go down’. A tough fight. I ended up gassing out and he ended up choking me out by taking me down and grabbing my neck.
“But I learned a big lesson that fight. Maybe you should breathe when you fight.”
But it didn’t dissuade him. “If anything that made me want to fight even more,” he said. “It was a great experience and I took a lot out of it and that was my first fight.”
Muhammad Ali passed away in 2016, before his grandson had even contemplated fighting himself.
“I wish I could go back and ask him a lot more questions now,” Ali Walsh said. “A great man and a great grandfather too.
“But he did give my brother some advice. He told my brother to eat healthy, do some roadwork and my brother asked him what makes a fighter and my grandfather told him: ‘Moving and dancing. That makes a fighter.'”
But he is not expecting to replicate his legendary grandfather in MMA.
Watch as Jake Paul reacts to Ali Walsh’s KO over Isaiah Figueroa. The grandson of Muhammad Ali picked up his second PFL win
“Even stylistically me and my grandfather are completely different. He liked to move and dance around the ring. It was like poetry in motion almost. The way I fight, I come forward and I’m looking to just bang, so even stylistically me and my grandfather are completely different,” Ali Walsh said.
“It doesn’t take much to knock somebody out especially when you’re wearing four ounce of gloves. That’s one of my super powers I think, just being able to touch you and if it’s on the right spot, you might go to sleep.
“I’m here to just show how I like to fight and hopefully everything works out.”
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