Laila Ali asked me this last week on Friday Night Fights whether I wanted to be her Howard Cosell. "If you had a hairpiece I'd pull it off," she told me. I'd go get one if she promised to go after it.
Women's boxing has come a long way since Christy Martin began popularizing it about a decade ago, and I have met plenty of female fighters who take themselves and their profession very seriously. But sex sells, and there is no question about it -- it is more than her last name and steadily improving boxing skills that make Laila compelling.
The woman is great looking. Not great looking in a Mia St. John you're-supposed-to-think-I-look-great kind of way, but really great looking. And just like Major League Baseball takes advantage of Derek Jeter's and Barry Zito's affect on the opposite sex, and the NFL does the same with Jason Sehorn, and the NBA does the same with Rick Fox; just like Oscar De La Hoya's sex appeal is exploited for profit, so too should Laila's be.
The question the daughter of the most famous athlete of all time must answer, however, is whether she is more A-Rod or Anna. Is she, like the Texas shortstop, among the -- perhaps the -- very best at what she does, or is she closer to being the boxing Kournikova?
Beating up an over-the-hill and undersized Christy Martin last Saturday night did little to answer this question. To Laila's credit, she told me -- in typically candid fashion -- that the only reason she took the Martin fight was that Christy was calling her out and there was money to be made. "She wasn't even on my radar until she started running her mouth," is how Laila put it.
Laila is media savvy without sounding rehearsed. She talks about things like the "Ali brand." She talks about how some of the better female fighters are not well known enough, and thus do not present a sufficient monetary reward, to justify the risk of fighting them. Yet rather than using her potentially dangerous opponents' low profiles as an excuse to avoid them, she and her promoter-husband Johnny McClain try to build worthy-but-unknowns like Anne Wolfe into stars on Laila's undercards.
There is a difference, of course, between not ignoring names like Wolfe and Veronica Simmons, and actually fighting them. And Laila did struggle mightily with the relatively inexperienced, nearly 40-year-old Jackie Frazier-Lyde. But perhaps her struggle with Joe Frazier's daughter had more to do with the intensity of the Frazier side of the Ali-Frazier blood-feud, than with Laila's own limitations as a fighter. And maybe Laila will eventually not only fight some of her more dangerous opponents, but actually beat them.
She can certainly hit with real power. She has already knocked out Valerie Mahfood twice, whereas Wolfe split two fights with Mahfood, losing the first by knockout and winning the rematch on points.
Laila's celebrity affords her opportunity that the Simmonses of the world simply do not have. Her name, her physical appearance, and her winning personality have resulted in magazine spreads and television commercials, which have in turn created a profile far bigger than any other female fighter. All of this means that Laila is able to stay active against any opponent she chooses; she can box full-time, while almost all of her peers work full-time jobs and box part-time.
Advantages aside, Laila's talent, work ethic, experience and the relative paucity of quality 160-pound-plus female boxers, means that she could be the favorite against any woman under 170 pounds. She might be A-Rod by default.
Laila has expressed to me on several occasions that I do not give her the credit she deserves. Reflecting on it (and even reading what I have written here), she may be right. My assessment of her ability has always been a bit stingy in spirit.
So let me say here that she is perhaps the best package, at her size, of talent, skill, and heart. She is good -- there is no doubt about it.
The whiff of cynicism from this direction is perhaps due to the fact that in a few short years, Laila has been able to come as far as she has. No matter how much ability she possesses, the fact that in that timeframe she has already come to be even perceived as among the elite -- let alone that she might actually be the elite -- speaks to me more about the state of woman's boxing than about the ability of its brightest star.
Nevertheless, it appears that Laila Ali will be around for a while and this is a good thing for the still-fledgling sport. It's an even better thing for me, if she's serious about snatching at the top of my head. Of course, her husband was a world-class cruiserweight not too long ago. Kind of puts a damper on the whole thing.
Max Kellerman is a studio analyst for ESPN2's "Friday Night Fights" and the host of the show "Around The Horn."