Shaquille O’Neal has extended a grand business offer to a young rising athlete.
Nalah Barry isn’t your average 6-year-old. Marca notes that her father, Dominic Barry, was a professional boxer who is now teaching her the ropes. Barry is forging her path as a five-time boxing gold medalist with a gray belt in martial arts.
She also has a strong fanbase online through her prominence on her father’s TikTok page. One video garnered 76.9 million views and 8.2 million likes. His account has 1.6 million followers (at the time of this writing).
Barry’s journey was not overnight. In fact, she lost every tournament for the first six months of her career, Dominic revealed in a TikTok video. He also shared that despite that challenging time, she displayed toughness, grit, and a spirit of perseverance.
“In the beginning, it was all about her heart. One day, she snapped. One day, everything started clicking. Actually, it was the training that we put in outside of jujitsu. She wanted to put more training in with me, more weight lifting, more running,” Dominic explained in the TikTok video.
He described putting his daughter in a hyperbolic time chamber, after which she started bringing home gold. Per Game Rant, this is a reference to an alternate-dimension training space in the popular manga series, “Dragon Ball ,” where time passes slower and environmental conditions are much more extreme than the real world, so trainees can build skill quickly.
@cantstopdom9 Make sure yal go vote for my daughter for YOUTH ATHLETE OF THE YEAR! #jiujitsu #wrestling #mma #fatherdaughter #youthsports
O’Neal stumbled upon Barry’s story while scrolling through Instagram, and she and left quite the impression, as reported by Marca. O’Neal offered to sponsor Barry and flew her family to New York, where he continued to shower them with generosity. He donated $10,000 to the family, which was matched by his partner, Galaxy Universal, a global footwear organization and brand management platform.
Taking it a step further, O’Neal offered Barry a shoe deal.
“I’m have my guy pick up some mockups, put this on the shoe, and then probably offer you a little shoe deal,” O’Neal said in an Instagram video.
“I started the Shaq brand as an affordable brand because I had a big deal with Reebok and a lady came one day, cussed me out because the shoes were too high. So, I started this affordable brand. Since ’95, we sold a lot of shoes. And this is my new partnership, Galaxy. They’re about to take it to the next, next level,” O’Neal added.
@cantstopdom9 Shaquille O’Neal signed my 6 year old daughter to a shoe deal 😱
