Laila Ali wants to take some lawmakers into the boxing ring

By Judy Kurtz - 03/07/12 08:55 PM ET

Laila Ali may be retired from boxing, but that doesn’t mean she still can’t take a few playful jabs at her opponents.

The athlete and former “Dancing With the Stars” contestant joined Reps. John Fleming (R-La.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) and Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) and Delegate Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands) to launch National Kidney Month last week at the Rayburn House Office Building. Ali is a spokeswoman for the American Kidney Fund.

Although the mother of two isn’t throwing any more punches as a professional boxer, when ITK inquired whether there were any politicians she’d like to knock some sense into in the boxing ring, Ali told us without naming names, “There’re so many. Where do you start?”

And much like her legendary dad, Muhammad Ali, the 34-year-old former fighter has a knack for dissing her rivals, saying, “I miss boxing. I loved it while I was doing it, but there just wasn’t really much there left for me and there still isn’t now as far as competition. So I’m on to other things now.”

Ali says her dad, 70, doesn’t exactly keep tabs on her busy schedule, saying with a laugh that he “doesn’t have the time or energy to do that.” But she thinks he would approve of her taking the fight against kidney disease — which affects 31 million Americans — to Capitol Hill: “For the most part, my dad knows that whatever I’m doing is with integrity, it’s positive, and that I’m not going to embarrass him or let him down. So he’s happy about that.”