Throughout the fight week media events leading up to her bout against Avril Mathie on the Serrano/Cruz undercard last Saturday, Ramla Ali made mention of having a cold and not feeling terribly well in a casual, almost offhand manner.
She wasn’t being evasive or playing coy as it turns out. Even Ali wasn’t aware of the severity of the situation until after her dominant unanimous decision win over Mathie, which earned Ramla her first professional boxing title.
Ali didn’t seem quite her typical self both during interviews and at certain junctures during the fight. Despite a convincing and, at times, roughhouse performance against Mathie, the usually sprightly Ramla appeared a bit gassed out in the middle rounds before catching her second wind. There was a good reason for this.
A post-fight trip to the hospital revealed that Ali had fought ten hard rounds on Saturday with a partially collapsed right lung which resulted from a severe pneumonia-related viral infection she was suffering through unbeknownst to her.
How Ramla fought at all, much less as well as she did, under these conditions is almost unfathomable and a testament to her resilience, tenacity, and undeniable dedication to boxing.
Ali developed and sharpened her survivor’s mentality at a young age, having endured the Somali civil war, a perilous exit from her homeland, and the treatment she and her family received at the refugee camps.
With that in mind, struggling through this illness to compete on such an impactful event was simply not open to debate as far as she was concerned. Which tells you everything you need to know about Ramla in a nutshell.
It goes without saying that healing up is Ali’s top priority, but having captured the IBF Intercontinental super-bantamweight title Saturday night by beating Avril Mathie puts Ramla that much closer to a showdown opposite unified IBF/WBO world champion Cherneka Johnson in the not too distant future.
Ali also fancies a go at WBC titleholder Yamileth Mercado, the green and gold world championship belt being one she has a dream of one day possessing.
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