From Refugee to the Boxing Ring: Ramla Ali Is Fighting To Make History

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2022

⏱️ 37 minutes

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Summary

Ramla Ali doesn’t know when her birthday is. Born in Somalia, she and her family became refugees after fleeing during the country’s civil war in the early 1990s, leaving all important documents behind. Ali grew up in London where she developed a love for boxing - and she got really, really good at it. Eventually, Ali became the first Somalian woman to box at the Olympics…and outside of the ring, Ali became a model and humanitarian, founding a women’s boxing club that exploded in popularity around London. This Saturday, Ali is attempting to make history, where she’d be one of the first women to box professionally in Saudi Arabia. Michael Rothstein shares how Ramla Ali got here, and how she’s already made history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Michael Ratzstein, we're here to talk about a woman who is a boxer and a humanitarian
0:05.2	and an author and a model and someone who's about to make history this week with a fight
0:11.5	that we'll talk about in just a moment.
0:13.3	But I wanted to start the story of Ramla Ali with a simple question.
0:21.6	How old is she?
0:23.2	Pablo, she actually doesn't know.
0:26.3	And that is because she is a Somalian refugee.
0:33.6	Ramla Ali was a baby and she and her family left Somalia way back in the early 1990s.
0:45.4	When they left, they didn't take any of the documents with them.
0:49.2	They were concerned about fleeing for their lives and their safety, not making sure they
0:54.5	had every paper and every birth certificate.
0:57.2	So Ramla, her brother, they don't know how old they are.
1:02.0	Their best guess is that she was born in 1989.
1:07.3	She'll get bits and pieces from family members.
1:10.0	They'll be like, oh, this cousin was born six days before you were born.
1:14.6	So maybe you were born on a Tuesday or you might have been born in November or April.
1:19.8	There's no real concept for her of understanding when her actual birthday is.
1:31.0	When I was sitting with Ramla and we were actually driving around Los Angeles in their Greyhonda
1:36.0	Civic, her husband was driving.
1:37.7	Ramla and I were in the back seat just kind of chatting for a few hours.
1:43.0	She called it Western privilege to have a birthday that you know and to celebrate
1:47.7	birthdays like that.
	...

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