“Your Father’s Brain Damaged! Your Father’s Messed Up!”: Laila Ali Couldn’t Shake Off Bully’s Insult on Late Father Muhammad Ali’s Health for Years

The childhood of former middleweight champion Laila Ali was not one filled with joy and happiness. Despite being the daughter of Muhammad Ali, Laila was subjugated to a lot of mental abuse by everyone present around her. Her problems included many things like her fragile relationship with her parents and step-siblings, her altercations in school due to being bullied and getting into fights.

Moreover, these problems would only grow as she grew older, with her father’s health deteriorating while she got more mentally damaged in school. In addition, she even detailed how a bully insulted her father which she could not fathom and even haunts her to this day.e

Laila Ali reveals the time a bully insulted her father

On the 28th page of her book, Reach!: Finding Strength, Spirit, and Personal Power, she revealed that her father had grown more distant from her and her mother. This was after he divorced and moved in with his fourth wife Lonnie. She then added that his deteriorating health became worse during the eighties and detailed the time he was insulted by a school bully. Although Laila wanted to hit him a more important question came to her mind at the time.

“Dad became a distant figure. After Mom divorced him, he married Lonnie and moved to a big farm in rural Michigan. Physically and emotionally, he became more remote, it was a difficult time for him. In the mid-eighties, his physical deterioration was obvious to all. I remember a schoolmate taunting me with, “Your father’s brain damaged! Your father’s messed up!” I wanted to kick the kid in his mouth, but underneath I was more confused than angry.” she wrote.

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This was not all as she also described how she witnessed her father’s condition getting worse by the day. However, she never knew the exact reason why Muhammad Ali‘s condition became so much worse.

Laila describes how Muhammad Ali’s condition became worse with time

In the next paragraph, Laila Ali claimed that his condition was never discussed by either her mother or Lonnie. However, she could see exactly what her father was going through and also detailed how the changes got worse with time. However, she added that the biggest change in his life was moving to Fermont from Los Angeles leaving his glamorous life in the dust.

“His condition was never discussed in full detail, not by him or Lonnie or my mom. We weren’t told much at all. What we saw, though couldn’t be denied. His hands began to shake; his speech slurred. A change, which had begun when we were still small, was now evident in his every movement. The bigger change, though, was that he had left Los Angeles—and the glamorous life in his Fremont Place mansion—for a remote farm. Why? I never knew,” she added.

Muhammad Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1984 which only got worse leading up to his tragic death in 2016. Many papers and studies have claimed that boxing was more than partially responsible for this. He even ignored his doctor’s warning 14 years before being diagnosed, which only made it worse. However, Ali loved the sport of boxing dearly and walked where his heart took him.

What did you think about Laila wanting to hit her schoolmate for insulting her father? Let us know in the comments.

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