A Closer Look at Top Rank’s Newest Signee Nico Ali Walsh

On March 29, 1966, Bob Arum promoted his first fight, a 15-round contest between Muhammad Ali and George Chuvalo at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Fifty-five years later, the indefatigable Arum is still going strong and this past Thursday, June 24, he announced that his company, Top Rank, had brought a new aspirant into the fold, Nico Ali Walsh, a 20-year-old middleweight who will make his pro debut on August 14 against an opponent to be named on a show whose other pieces have not yet fallen into place.

A new signing by Top Rank normally isn’t newsworthy beyond the sphere of boxing, but news of this signing was splashed all over the internet. That’s because Nico Ali Walsh arrives at Top Rank with a ready-made back story. He is the grandson of the aforementioned Muhammad Ali, rest his soul, who was once the most famous man on the planet.

Nico has an older brother, Biaggio Ali Walsh, who once seemed destined for a career in the National Football League. Biaggio averaged 11.5 yards per rushing attempt during his three years with national high school football powerhouse Las Vegas Bishop Gorman. Biaggio was named the Gatorade Nevada High School Football Player of the Year as a junior and may have repeated as a senior if not for the ankle injury that caused him to miss several games.

Owing to injuries and other factors, Biaggio washed out as a collegian. He redshirted his first year at the University of California and then appeared in 10 games as a back-up the next season before returning home to play for his old high school coach who had taken the head coaching job at UNLV.

Biaggio gave up football before using up all of his eligibility. He is pursuing a career as an actor and model. And Nico, two years younger, has now supplanted him as the most notable athlete in the family.

Rasheda Ali Walsh, Nico’s mom, was the second-oldest of Ali’s nine children, arriving two-and-a-half minutes before her twin sister Jamillah. Rasheda’s mom, the former Belinda Boyd, married Ali when she was 17. The marriage lasted nine years, during which Ali fathered two children out of wedlock and took up with Veronica Porsche, the woman who would become his third wife. Laila Ali, the most well-known of Muhammad Ali’s children, is Rasheda’s half-sister.

According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, Rasheda and her husband Robert Walsh, a former Marine, met in 1991 at a restaurant at a beach resort in Florida where she was working as a hostess and he was the executive chef. They reportedly dated for a year before Rasheda revealed that she was Muhammad Ali’s daughter.

Robert Walsh was born on Chicago’s South Side and Rasheda was raised in the Chicago suburb of Flossmoor. They eventually returned to the Chicago area where Robert worked at several upscale Chicago restaurants before opening his own place in the ‘burbs, Biaggio’s Italian Restaurant. Walsh is Italian on his mother’s side. Biaggio was his grandfather’s name. An enticing job offer from Bally’s, a mid-Strip casino resort, brought Robert and Rasheda to Las Vegas.

Periodically Muhammad Ali would come into Biaggio’s and amuse the other patrons in the restaurant with card tricks. Whatever difficulties her parents had, they did not poison Rasheda’s relationship with her famous father. To the contrary, she has been devoted to preserving his legacy as a great humanitarian and, in common with her older sister Maryum, has become a spokesperson in the fight to find a cure for the disease that ravaged him. Rasheda even wrote a book on the subject, a book for parents to read to children who have questions about the illness. The title is “I’ll Hold Your Hand So You Won’t Fall: A Child’s Guide to Parkinson’s Disease.”

Growing up, Rasheda Ali Walsh had designs on a career in the theater. Marriage and motherhood pointed her in a different direction, but those plans weren’t completely abandoned. She has worked as a production assistant on various TV shows and appeared on VH1’s “Love and Hip Hop: New York.”

Rasheda, who owns a degree in mass communications from the University of Illinois, is big on education. The photo that accompanies this story was taken when Nico was named to the Dean’s List at UNLV. A business major, he is on course to graduate in the spring of 2022.

How does she feel about her youngest child pursuing a career in boxing? In a 2016 interview, when Nico was new to the sport, she conceded she wasn’t too happy about it: “I know Nico is pursuing his passion. As much as I don’t want him to do it, I don’t want to be that parent who says you can’t pursue your dream.”

Nico Ali Walsh will undoubtedly make great headway as a boxer. Top Rank matchmakers Bruce Trampler and Brad “Abdul” Goodman are at the top of the food chain when it comes to “moving” a fighter. Nico will have the benefit of training under Kronk crackerjack SugarHill Steward who did a masterful job of preparing Tyson Fury for his second encounter with Deontay Wilder. But eventually there will come that moment of truth; a crossroads fight with an opponent considered his equal or better, and then it’s all on him.

Beyond that, while being the grandson of a man as famous as Muhammad Ali can certainly open some doors, it can also be a burden. Can he handle the fame that will come his way, or the derision that will descend upon him from cowardly internet trolls if he proves to be nothing special?

Time will tell. We wish him well.

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