Time To Show Us The New “Ali Act” Bill!

By Larry Goldberg and Boxing Insider Staff

Show us the bill.

That is the only thing that matters right now, and it is the one thing nobody involved in this week’s media tour has produced. Nico Ali Walsh went on The Ariel Helwani Show on Tuesday and told us the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act is dead in its current form, that it will “pass as something else,” and that the changes he pushed in his meeting with TKO are on the way. Financial transparency. Free agency. Length of contracts. Rankings transparency.

Great. Where is the text?

Here is what BoxingInsider.com can report: the text, or pieces of it, exists. Communications circulated among sanctioning body stakeholders and reviewed by BoxingInsider.com describe contract term structures under discussion for the Senate version, including a three year cap on initial contract terms and a six year maximum with extensions. That is real statutory language being shaped, right now, in private.

So the situation is worse than “no bill.” The bill is being written. Stakeholders are seeing pieces of it. Terms are being negotiated. And none of it has been filed, published, or put in front of the fighters whose careers it will govern. Legislation is not amended in a conference room at a fight weekend or in an email thread among insiders. It is amended in committee, in markup, in writing, in public. We have seen none of that.

And here is the harder question. The question is not Nico’s character or his sincerity. It is whether any single fighter, even one with that name, can serve as the de facto endpoint for statutory language that will bind every professional boxer in the country.

He is not a senator. He is not a commissioner. He does not represent a fighters’ union, because boxing does not have one. He founded the Ali Act Preservation Alliance in April and he testified well at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing. Credit where due. But an alliance he assembled himself does not make him the elected bargaining agent for every professional boxer in America. If a final deal arrives blessed by Muhammad Ali’s grandson, that is a powerful endorsement. It is not a mandate.

Lou DiBella made the case for Nico last night, and his view deserves the room. “If you know Nico at all, and you know his parents, and you knew his grandfather, you know that there isn’t any bullshit with this kid. He’s an Ali … he isn’t for sale,” Lou wrote. “And there is nothing wrong with him taking an opportunity to meet with decision-makers around boxing, Senators, Senate staffers, Nick Khan or otherwise.”

On the character question, Lou is right, and nothing in this column argues otherwise. Nobody here is saying Nico Ali Walsh was bought. The concern is not his integrity. It is his leverage, and everyone else’s. A man negotiating alone, with no published text, no union behind him, and no enforcement mechanism, can be completely sincere and still walk away with promises that never make it into statute. That is not a judgment of Nico. It is a description of how Washington works. And it is exactly why the private circulation of draft terms matters: the people at the table are seeing language the fighters are not.

Now look at what Nico actually said. By his own account, the Revival Act was not going to pass the Senate. “These senators have been agreeing with us. They know that the revival act is not going to pass as it stands.” Those are his words.

So the bill was stalled. And at that moment, the man who told Congress the legislation should not carry his grandfather’s name flew to New York at TKO’s invitation, sat for a private meeting with the company pushing the bill, and then appeared on Zuffa’s own broadcast at Madison Square Garden.

That is the moment a stalled bill acquires a new narrative. Whatever concessions may or may not have been extracted, the public effect of the meeting and the subsequent broadcast appearance is the appearance of movement and buy-in. That appearance now exists in the record.

From TKO’s side, it is a classic media-management move: bring the most visible critic inside, put him on your platform, and let the footage speak.

But the footage cuts both ways. Every clip of Ali Walsh declaring victory is a clip confirming the Revival Act, as written and as passed by the House, could not survive the Senate. The company’s most prominent invited guest is on the record saying its bill is finished in its current form. You cannot spend a year telling Washington the legislation is fine and then have your featured broadcast guest announce it is being rewritten because it was going to fail.

And notice what is missing from the list of four. None of them addresses enforcement. Transparency a fighter cannot enforce is a press release. Free agency a fighter cannot afford to defend is free agency in name only. This is not a new concern, and it is not this column’s invention. When the House passed the bill, Representatives Bobby Scott and Ilhan Omar, who both voted for it, publicly called on the Senate to strengthen protections against coercive contracts and forced arbitration. Their words, on the record. Any revised text that does not spell out how a fighter actually enforces these rights has not addressed the fighters’ real position at all.

And understand what the calendar does to all of this. The 119th Congress ends January 3. The Senate leaves for August recess in a few weeks, September belongs to government funding, and October belongs to the campaign trail. There is no realistic path for a rewritten bill to be introduced, marked up, passed, and reconciled with the House as a standalone before the clock runs out. Which leaves the route Washington always leaves for legislation like this: attach it to something that must pass. A defense authorization. A year-end spending package. If the rewritten Revival Act becomes law this year, that is almost certainly how, folded into a December bill, voted on as part of a package no member can realistically oppose, with the final language shaped by whoever was in the room when it was written. The same rooms the fighters are not in now.

Maybe the changes get in. Maybe the contract caps circulating in private hold up, and maybe financial disclosure, free agency, rankings transparency, and real enforcement language all appear in binding statutory text. If they do, I will write that column too, happily.

But nobody should be declaring wins, for the fighters or for TKO, off a private meeting, a highlight reel, and an email chain. Publish the revised text. File it. Let the lawyers who drafted the original Ali Act read it. Let the fighters read it.

Show us the bill.