PFL’s Biaggio Ali Walsh Shares Fondest Memory with His Grandfather, Muhammad Ali

Biaggio Ali Walsh aims to honor his family’s combat sports legacy with a victory at the 2022 PFL Championships.

The 24-year-old will have all eyes on him for his amateur clash with Tom Graesser. It’s not very common to see amateur contests on professional cards, and to see them on a season finale is ever rarer. But the Professional Fighters League made an exception for Ali Walsh, believing very much in the young man’s potential. Ahead of his upcoming bout, Ali Walsh spoke with Sherdog about his relationship with his grandfather, boxing legend Muhammad Ali, and shared his fondest memory with him.

“Since I was a little kid, we would always go to his house and spend time with him. Obviously, he had Parkinson’s [disease] and his speech was a little bit impaired and whatnot. The main thing that we would do to spend time with him was just hang out, just hang around the house, watch movies and do magic tricks. We would draw with him. Even when we would go to restaurants, we would be at the restaurant and he would draw on the tablecloth that they give you, and we would draw it as well. Moments like that I will remember forever. I think one of my favorite memories is when we saw, um, Peter Jackson's ‘King Kong’ when it first came out. If you've seen the movie, you don't really see King Kong until like an hour, hour and a half in the movie. The first hour of the movie, he kept just tapping us, ‘Where the monkey at, where the monkey at? Where the monkey at?’ Those are one of my just favorite moments that I've had with him.”

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(00:00) Intro
(00:18) His Italian origins
(01:12) Preparing for Graesser
(01:44) Competing in an amateur contest
(02:16) Being offered to fight on the 2022 PFL Championships card
(03:15) His love for MMA
(05:17) His favorite MMA fighters
(06:25) The fondest memory he has of his grandfather, Muhammad Ali
(08:01) His relationship with boxing
(09:04) His college football career
(10:40) His pick for this season’s Super Bowl
(11:39) Watching some footage of Graesser
(12:39) Looking forward to Sadibou Sy’s clash
(13:11) Outro