Ramla Ali approaches a table at a New York City hotel restaurant struggling to balance slices of orange and a 1.5-liter water bottle in her right hand. Meanwhile, she sticks her left hand in a pocket of her sweatpants, fiddling it to confirm that she has all her supplements. Glucosamine, fish oil, vitamin-B complex, coenzyme Q-10. All there.

It’s fight week—she takes on Avril Mathie in a junior featherweight bout at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 4—so Ali is ramping up her nutritional routine. “There’s loads of sh-t,” she laments, with a rueful laugh, as she sits down to discuss her unlikely rise to boxing prominence, and her goal to bring the women’s fight game to new heights. “Everywhere.” Read More