Like Father, Like Daughter -- Another Ali Rules the Ring

Nov. 9, 2006 — -- It was 35 years ago that Muhammad Ali took to the ring in Madison Square Garden for the Fight of the Century against Smokin' Joe Frazier.

On Saturday night, Ali's daughter Laila will step into the same ring to take on Montana's Shelley Burton with an attitude quite like her father's.

"Of course I'm not nervous," she said.

And like her father did, Laila has risen to the top her sport -- with a record of 22 wins, no losses and five women's heavyweight boxing crowns.

She entered the sport at the relatively old age of 21 and recognizes that being a fighter takes a special sort of person.

"To be a fighter, I think we're all a little off, to want to fight," she said. "It's off to want to be a fighter for a living."

Although Laila has pursued the same sport as her father, she has a strikingly different persona in the ring. He was a boxer, jabbing and dancing around the ring -- as he said, "Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee." She describes herself as more of a fighter.

"I have to work at boxing," she explained. "I know how to do it, and when I do it I look good doing it, but it's not what comes to me first. What comes to me first is standing there and just throwing punches, and, you know, as I call, scrapping. I like to just stand right in front of you."

Although Laila has found herself fighting the same sport as her father, she spent much of her young life trying to differentiate herself from him.

She admits that she and her father were never that close. When Ali cheated on her mother and they divorced, Laila says, she took her mother's side.

After that, Laila only saw Ali during the summers. And she was the only one of his seven children who never converted to Islam.

"I was pretty much trying to find myself and a lot of times not wanting to be Muhammad Ali's daughter and, you know, people just liking me for that reason and seeing that there was a lot of fake people around my dad and people just want from you, aren't really your true friends," she said. "So I would --