Boxing News’ Elliot Worsell caught up with Zayas just before his breakthrough win over Patrick Teixeira on June 8 in New York.
LIKE many other children, every decision made and every turn Xander Zayas In his early years, he was driven by necessity rather than the luxury of choice. For example, he moved to the United States from Puerto Rico when he was 11 years old, simply because that was where his mother and stepfather wanted to settle.
Then, once there, he would learn to speak English within six months because without this ability, he would feel more lost and alienated than he already was. Whereas before that, when he was only six years old, he was abandoned in a boxing gym and then took up boxing not because he wanted to but because his mother, worried about him suffering from bullying, forced him to follow that path as a way of teaching him self-defense.
In fact, it was the first language other than his mother tongue that Zayas learned as a child: the language of self-defense; the language of resistance; the language of adaptation to the environment.
“At first, she just pushed me out to study and honestly, I didn’t want to do it,” Zayas, now 21, recalls. Boxing News. “I don’t want to be beaten. I’ve been beaten on the street before, so why would I want to be beaten for fun again?
“But anyway, that’s how it started and I remember this girl used to beat me up so bad, man. She used to manhandle me in sparring. It got to the point where I just got mad at myself and said, ‘Come on! You’ve got to do something about this!’ So I started coming back and I started punching back and then I found that I loved it.”
CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS – SEPTEMBER 15: Xander Zayas punches Roberto Valenzuela Jr. during their NABO/NABF middleweight title fight at the American Bank Center on September 15, 2023 in Corpus Christi, Texas. (Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
Again, Zayas’ mastery of boxing was not accidental or natural, but forced upon him by circumstances. In this case, he was forced to learn and improve because of the humiliation of being criticized by a girl every time his mother took him to the gym, hoping to alleviate the humiliation he experienced outside the gym.
As is often the case, one thing led to another, and by the time Zayas was 11 and living in Sunrise, Florida, he was at least able to take care of himself in a way he hadn’t been able to before finding the boxing gym. That, if nothing else, gave him the confidence he otherwise would have lacked when making such a big move at such a young and impressionable age.
“It was really hard at first,” he said, “coming from (San Juan) Puerto Rico and not being able to speak the language; not having any friends; having to start a new school and find a new boxing gym. It was really hard at first, but at 11, you’re like a sponge. You start to learn things really quickly. Within six or eight months, I was speaking the language and had a few friends. So it was a lot easier.”
“I don’t have any other place where Spanish is spoken except my house. Wherever you go, whether it’s a supermarket or a restaurant, you have to speak English. There’s no way around it. Where I live in the United States, there’s not a big Latino community, and if there is, they still speak to you in English because they want to push you to be better.”
In many ways, that sentiment could describe much of Zayas’s early life and the journey he has been on so far. After all, with every challenge he faced, he was forced to come up with a solution, and in pursuing this solution, he not only added strings to his bow from a practical perspective, but also accumulated wisdom that belied his years.
“Being around a lot of professional fighters from a young age definitely helped,” he said, when complimented on how mature he sounded. “I’ve been training with professional fighters since I was 12 and training with them. I’ve seen it all. Also, my family raised me that way; to be practical and calm. I’ve been around people who are older than me all my life and that taught me to take care of myself and handle things. Do your job and get out there, that’s it. There’s nothing else to do.”
He certainly gives the impression of a typical phenomenon; or a prodigy. Not only gifted with an uncanny maturity and impressive composure, Zayas is also a student, both in boxing and in life, and has studied others with such a keen eye that it is no surprise that he has imitated so many styles along the way, whether in speech or in the ring.
“When I was 12 or 13, that’s when I really started watching boxing,” he said. “Before, I used to watch the big fights but they were too late and I had to go to bed. But from about 13, that’s when I started watching more boxing. I would watch Miguel Cotto, my all-time favourite, and also Andre Ward and Manny Pacquiao. Who else? The Klitschko brothers [Vitali and Wladimir]. Vasily Lomachenko. I remember when he came out of the Olympics. It was amazing.
LAS VEGAS – JULY 26: Miguel Cotto receives eight points after being knocked down by Antonio Margarito in their WBA welterweight title fight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on July 26, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Margarito won by TKO in the 11th round. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
“When I got to high school, I knew, at 13 or 14, that this was what I wanted to do. One of my teachers came in my freshman year – my English teacher – and said we had to write down our major life goals and say where we all saw ourselves in five years. I wrote down that I was going to be a professional boxer and then we had to throw it away – like a game – and someone picked it up and gave it back to me. Less than five years later, I was a professional boxer.”
Of course, the big goal of any amateur boxer is to appear, and hopefully win a medal, at the Olympic Games, and in this regard, Zayas is no different. He too wants to call himself an Olympian and represent his country, it’s just that the new age requirement of 19 unfortunately prevents Zayas from doing so at the 2020 Summer Olympics.
“It was a big disappointment for me,” he said. “I feel like it’s a disappointment for any athlete when you dream of going to the Olympics to represent your country and then you can’t do it because of some rules or technicalities.
“For me, it wasn’t too difficult because it was an age gap issue and I knew I didn’t want to wait until 2024. I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now if I had to wait. So it wasn’t too difficult for me because it gave me the opportunity to become a professional athlete. I knew I didn’t want to wait until 2024, that’s why I took the opportunity. Then you think about all the athletes who were preparing for the 2020 Olympics and then got hit by the Covid pandemic. They had to start all over again. I bet it was much harder for them than it was for me.”
For Zayas, he turned the disappointment of not making the Olympics into a kind of motivation; a motivation not necessarily to try again, but rather to do what he had always wanted to do: become a professional boxer. He did so in 2019, becoming the youngest fighter to sign a professional contract with Top Rank at the age of 16 in the 53 years since its inception. However, he only did so after making sure his mother was okay with it.
“We sat down as a family and talked about it, and my mom didn’t want me to do it in the first place,” he said. “She said, ‘Oh, you’re not done with school yet. You’re not a grown man yet, but you’re going to be fighting grown men soon.’ Then I went back to her and said, ‘Hey, this is what I want to do. This is my life. This is what I want to dedicate myself to.’ She said to me, ‘Okay, as long as you finish high school, you can do it.’ That same year, I was homeschooled, the same semester I became a professional boxer, and finished high school online while focusing on boxing.”
The great thing about staying in high school, beyond all the learning, is that Zayas can still stay connected, human, and connected, at least for now, to kids his own age. It also means he gets to experience the pride of seeing his friends excited to know that he’s about to take his boxing journey to the next level when he turns 17.
“I remember I was on a field trip and they announced that. [Zayas turning pro],” he said. “One of my boys was like, ‘Hey, did you really just sign with Top Rank?’ But I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t know what day they were going to announce it. So I was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ and then he showed me and said, ‘Look, it’s right here!’ He showed me the story and then all of a sudden I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I signed with Top Rank!’ It was amazing. Everyone was really happy for me. I feel like all my friends from high school are good people, so they were all really happy for me.”
Zayas is currently 18-0 with 12 knockouts. He will headline his first major show on June 8 at Madison Square Garden in New York, where he will face former WBO super welterweight champion Patrick Teixeira in a 10-round decision (Zayas wins on points, see below).
(Mikey Williams/Top Rank)
That, without a doubt, is the toughest challenge of Zayas’ career to date, however, considering the hype that has followed him every step of the way, and when he’s been described as everything from “a beacon of hope for Puerto Rico” to “the next Miguel Cotto”, perhaps a fight like this doesn’t come too soon.
While Xander Zayas may be young, and still in the learning phase of his life and career, there are some men—boxers—who hit puberty, so to speak, much earlier than others. In Zayas’ case, his voice deepened more quickly than his peers. There was hair on his chest as soon as he took off his jersey.
“Pressure is always going to follow you no matter what you do in life,” Zayas said. “As a young fighter, I feel like there’s always going to be pressure. I have a whole country behind me, so there’s always going to be pressure. I just have to stay focused, listen to my team and my family, and enjoy what I do; every interview, every training session, every fight.
“I’m not feel pressure, honestly. I feel like I’m progressing in the right direction and the right way. The whole team knows the goal and knows what we want. Little by little, we’re getting there. I’m not thinking about being ‘Next this’ or ‘Next that’. I just want to be myself. I want to be happy with what I do, have fun with what I do and make my family and teammates proud. Hopefully, I can make everyone who admires me and likes me as a professional boxer proud too.
