Ramla Ali On Fashion, Fasting And Being A First

The Olympic boxer has gone from refugee to queen of the ring. Now, Hollywood and high fashion have come knocking. She speaks to Katya Foreman about where she’s been, where she’s headed, and her greatest goal of all

It’s twilight on a spring day in March, and professional boxer Ramla Ali, on Zoom from L.A., flashes her swollen hands laced with grazes and cuts as she regales me with tales from her stay in her new, temporary home of the past 10 weeks. The athlete, who travelled Stateside to perfect her knockout skills, shares scenes from attending training camp with Manny Robles – the mastermind behind world champions including Andy Ruiz Jr., Jessie Magdaleno and Óscar Valdez – that conjure images reading more Fight Club than Sunset Blvd.

For the Somali-born, London-raised women’s super-bantamweight phenomenon, it’s all about stepping into the ring and out of her comfort zone. “It was eye-opening. I just wanted to learn from the best and absorb everything that he was willing to teach me,” says Ramla, describing how she’d leave every session literally wrung out. “On some days I’ll leave the gym and just feel so broken. Americans train like absolute animals, like beasts. You want to feel the pressure of what it feels like on fight night and that’s what you get in L.A.” The gruelling regime has paid off: at a Golden Boy Fight Night event in downtown L.A. on March 19th, Ramla knocked out her opponent, Shelly Barnett, in just two rounds.

Ramla’s list of achievements is long and impressive: she was the first female Somali to become a professional boxer and the first British Muslim woman to win the English and British national titles. In 2021, she travelled to Tokyo as the first Somali boxer to compete at the Olympic Games, ticking off a “monumental goal” and claiming a boxing milestone. But she’s not hanging up her boxing robe just yet. “My personal goal is obviously to be a world champion – but not just once. To win two belts, that would be great.”

While she pushes physical limits, for Ramla, boxing is equally about honing mental strength. She practices meditation and regularly consults a sports psychologist. But most importantly, in the lead up to a fight she unplugs from social media, which she deems both a blessing and a curse. “It’s a blessing in that you can elevate yourself and promote yourself, but then you always get people leaving nasty comments or you end up comparing yourself to other people. But you are not on the same path as them, you are on your own path,” she says. “Being in the ring, you have to stay laser-focused, because the one split second that you switch off is when you can get hurt.”

Ramla came to L.A. to level up. But given her proximity to Tinseltown, the conversation shifts to In the Shadows, the latest project by BAFTA award-winning and Oscar-nominated The Favourite producer Lee Magiday, who found Ramla’s life story so compelling she turned it into a screenplay. Due to start filming at the end of the year, the biopic will trace the athlete’s epic journey from a child refugee fleeing Somalia’s civil war with her family to a world-class boxing champion on the rise.

“I read the script and it’s so good,” teases Ramla. Asked which actress she would love to see as the lead, she mentions Lupita Nyong’o and Zoe Saldaña, but the time-pressed athlete, who after two years finally came round to the idea of bringing her story to screens, is happy to leave that part to the Hollywood brass.

“I mean, at first, I didn’t want it to happen. It felt really intrusive … my life would be there for everyone to look at. But Lee Magiday broke me down,” says Ramla, explaining how the producer courted her so earnestly that, over time, she became like family. “She’d come to watch me fight or she’d come with me to a family wedding. And I just thought, you know what, if anyone’s going to do this film justice, it will be Lee.”

A force of nature, as well as a model, author, and racial equality activist, Ramla has become a powerful role model for the younger generation. As she rose through the boxing ranks, her long and lean silhouette, flamboyant mane, and intense beauty quickly rocketed her onto the fashion radar, landing ambassador contracts with Dior, Cartier, and Nike. Presumably, she won’t be stuck for something to wear to her premiere. And as for the exposure: “I’d love my face to just be everywhere, that everybody gets sick of it,” she says, erupting into laughter.

When dressing up, comfort is key. One of her favourite evening looks is an outfit she wore for a dinner hosted by Cartier at the Sonara Camp at the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve last October, ahead of the inauguration ceremony for the Women’s Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. “I was wearing this amazing Dior silk chiffon dress with a gold belt and incredible diamond and gold jewellery, and my hair was amazing. And even though I was wearing heels, they were super comfortable as they had a bit of a chunk, which meant I could walk in them,” recalls Ramla, who also loves “a good handbag.” Her favourites include a small Dior tote with an orange dinosaur print. “It doesn’t really go with everything, but it’s a statement bag,” she says.

If only her 12-year-old self could have pictured how things would turn out. Asked how she got into boxing, Ramla recounts how she first stumbled across a boxercise class as an overweight kid who, having struggled with bullies at school, was looking to boost her self-confidence. At first, she concealed her new hobby from her parents.

“Culturally, boxing is seen to be a man’s sport. In most African households, taking up a career in sport is not good. Your parents want to see you become a doctor, lawyer or engineer. So for all those reasons, I chose to hide my passion for boxing from my family,” explains the athlete, who describes being in the ring, with that euphoric adrenalin rush, as “the only time I truly feel alive.” Adds Ramla: “I fell in love with the sport, fell in love with how it made me feel. And as the saying goes, the rest is history.”

Like a Hollywood ending, her mother is now her biggest fan, while Ramla has found a rock and fellow boxing nut in her coach and husband, Richard Moore. Since meeting, the pair have spent only one day apart and that was only due to pandemic-related “fight bubbles” for isolation and testing. “We were still FaceTiming, because I missed him already, even though we’re together 24/7,” she says.

More of a boxer than a fighter – “I like to show the art of boxing as opposed to just going in there and having a scrap” – Ramla continues to train during Ramadan each year. “Boxing is my job, so I still have to train even when I’m fasting. The gym is really hot and I’m sweating, I feel dehydrated, but I still have to go in and I have to work. And it is really, really hard,” she says. “But Ramadan, a lot of it is mental, and if you can push past the mental barrier, then you can train and fast at the same time. I’ve proven that it can be done year in, year out.”

Call it good genes. Asked where her drive come from, the athlete replies, “This is so cheesy, but a lot of my power and my drive comes from my mum, just looking at her and all the things that she overcame, and she never complained once. She’s a better fighter than I will ever be.”

For the ring, she has honed a distinctive look: black and purple, with a panther on the waistband of her shorts, a tribute to the Somali coat of arms and the Panthère de Cartier collection, her favourite line by the French jeweller. Clearly, she relishes her double life between the worlds of boxing and fashion. An embroidered black panther also prowls across the back of an emerald green robe from the custom-made ‘Dior Vibe’ boxing kit designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri for her New York fight at Madison Square Garden in late 2021. For Ramla, that moment cemented a merging of the two worlds.

“I always say don’t be afraid to be the first. I’m unique in that I box and then I do fashion and it’s two worlds that shouldn’t necessarily mix, but they do. And they’re two worlds that I love,” says Ramla, who among her most memorable fashion moments recalls being pulled from the scrum while attending the Dior Spring-Summer 2022 show. “It was crazy. Someone had to come to take me inside, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get in. There were so many people outside, so many photographers, so many avid fashion lovers waiting to see who’s going to the show and taking pictures of you, wanting to see what you’re wearing. And then afterwards, for the meet and greet with Maria Grazia, it was nuts. It was like people waiting to see the Beatles.”

So what does a girl who has the world’s greatest brands at her ring-torn feet wear when winding down from a fight? “I love my Crocs. I know! It’s so granny, but I don’t care. They protect my feet and it’s the best thing,” says Ramla, who likes to customize her black plastic clogs with BLM and black panther studs and peace signs. “I’ll have a shower and get straight into my sweats and a T-shirt, no sports bra, socks, and just watch movies and eat a nice meal.”

Measuring five foot seven tall, the clean-living athlete, who weighs a featherweight 122 pounds, works with a nutritionist who “makes sure everything is calculated for down to the ground, especially on fight week,” even if she’ll allow herself the occasional treat, such as nachos and popcorn for a cinema date. “My body lives and breathes the sport, even outside of competitions,” she says.

When it comes to shoots, meanwhile, the occupational hazards of her job often means putting in a little overtime in the make-up department. “I remember walking into a photoshoot with six stitches under my left eye and a massive black eye. And you know, they just had to work around it,” she shrugs.

While she says that now is “an amazing time to be a female boxer,” the activist athlete and humanitarian – who didn’t even have a ladies’ changing room when she first started out – used coaches’ lack of attention as “fuel to make myself better and to show them that I deserve to be there.” She is outspoken about her struggles. Perseverance drives her: wedge her into a stereotype and out come the gloves (perhaps the one accessory she can’t live without).

When asked if femininity and boxing go together, her response is swift. “Hundred per cent,” she says. “I always get these comments online saying you’re too pretty to box. What, because female boxers should look butch and manly? No. Every woman comes in different shapes and forms and you can be feminine in the ring and outside of the ring.”

When the pandemic brought boxing to a standstill, Ramla used the time to do something positive, penning “the kind of book that I wish I had growing up.” The self-help book entitled Not Without a Fight: Ten Steps to Becoming Your Own Champion details the key fights – a combination of life’s challenges and things she’s endured both in and outside of the ring – that have shaped her life. “It’s about not being afraid to be yourself or to be the first person. Because for me, I had to be the first for this, this, this and that. I wanted to help young people and show them that it is not that scary,” she says. “You shouldn’t be afraid to be the first of anything.”

Lately, Ramla has been building her own proud community of fighters. She is the founder of Sisters Club, a not-for-profit London-based charity that provides free weekly self-defense classes in which women, regardless of race, religion and ethnicity can learn the art of boxing and protecting themselves.

She also recently uploaded a video to Instagram, encouraging girls not to bow to pressure to “show more skin.” That also stems from her own life experience. The athlete recalls how, before being signed to IMG, she went to a competing modelling agency where she was told that if she wanted to make it in the business, she needed to show more skin.

“Today, I made that video to put on Instagram and say well, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. It’s a form of giving back that aligns with her worldview. She quotes one of her all-time heroes, with whom she happens to share her name: the late activist and boxing legend, Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay), who said, “The service you do for others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.”

Though he may have belonged to a time when all boxing heroes were men, the icon’s words hit her hard. “I want to be remembered for everything I do in the ring,” says Ramla. “But more than that, I want to be remembered for how I helped others outside of the ring.”

Editor in Chief: Olivia Phillips. Photographer: Kwaku Alston. Styling: Jèss Monterde. Fashion Director: Anna Castan. Hair: Ashley Lynn Hall. Make-Up: Tami Shirey. Photographer’s Assistants: Braden Moran, Ricky Steel and Anthony Avellano. Stylist’s Assistant: Manuel Gutierrez. Producer: Jesse Vora. Digital Tech: Sara Swaty Roger. Post Production: NS1Media. Production Assistant: Adam Robert Perez

From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s April 2022 issue