Like many children, Xander Zayas's decisions and actions in his early years were driven by necessity, not the luxury of choice. For example, he moved from Puerto Rico to the United States at age 11 simply because his mother and stepfather wanted to put down roots. And once he moved to the United States, he learned to speak English within six months, because not speaking English would have made him feel even more uncomfortable and alienated than he already was. Before that, at just six years old, he was dropped off at a boxing gym and later took up boxing lessons, not because he wanted to, but because his mother, concerned about the bullying he had to endure, forced him onto that path as a way to teach him self-defense. In fact, it was the first language Zayas learned as a child outside of his native tongue; a language of self-defense, a language of fighting back, a language of adapting to the environment.
“At first I was just thrown out there to learn, and to be honest, I didn't want to do it,” said Zayas, now 21. Boxing News“I didn't want to get beaten up. I was already getting beaten up in the street, so why would I want to get beaten up for fun?”
“But that's how it all started. I remember there was this little girl who used to hit me really hard. In sparring, she handled me well. I got mad at myself and started saying, 'Dude, I've got to do something about this!' So I came back and started hitting back. And I realized I loved it.”
Again, Zayas’s mastery of boxing was not accidental or natural, but rather forced by circumstance. In this case, he was forced to learn and improve in an attempt to alleviate the humiliation he was experiencing outside of the gym due to the humiliation of losing to girls every time his mother took him to 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 that he had not been able to before he found a boxing gym. It gave him the confidence he would have otherwise sorely lacked to make big decisions at a young and impressionable age.
“It was really hard at first,” he says. “Coming from Puerto Rico (San Juan), not speaking the language, having no friends, going to a new school, having to find a new boxing gym. It was really hard at first, but 11-year-olds are like sponges. They pick things up quickly. Within six or eight months, I was already speaking the language and had made a few friends. So it was a lot easier.”
“Except for my home, there was nowhere Spanish was spoken. Everywhere I went, whether it was the supermarket or a restaurant, I had to speak English. There was no other way. I live in the US, where there isn't a big Latino community, but if there was, they would speak to you in English because they want to encourage you to improve.”
In many ways, that sentiment sums up Zayas' young life and much of the journey he's been on thus far: After all, it's his duty to come up with a solution for every challenge he faces, and in pursuing that solution, he's not only developed his skills from a practical standpoint, but he's also accumulated wisdom beyond his years.
“Being surrounded by a lot of professional fighters from a young age definitely helped,” he said, when praised for speaking in a very mature manner. “I've been sparring with professional fighters and training with them since I was 12 years old. I've seen it all. My family also raised me to be a down-to-earth, level-headed person. I've been surrounded by people a lot older than me, so I've learned to take care of myself and put in the work. Do your job and get it done. That's it. There's nothing else to do.”
Zayas attacks Roberto Valenzuela Jr. during a fight at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi, Texas on September 15, 2023. (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
Indeed, he comes across as the quintessential genius, or perhaps even prodigy: Not only blessed with an eerie maturity and impressive poise, Zayas is also a student of both boxing and life, a keen student of others, so it's no wonder he's copied so many of their mannerisms, from the way they speak to the way they behave in the ring.
“I started watching boxing seriously when I was 12 or 13,” he says. “Before, I'd watch the big fights, but they were usually on late at night so I'd have to go to bed. But then around 13 I started watching a lot more boxing. I watched Miguel Cotto, my favourite fighter, as well as Andre Ward and Manny Pacquiao. Others? The Klitschko brothers (Vitali and Wladimir). Vasiliy Lomachenko. I remember when he came out of the Olympics, it was sensational.”
“When I got to high school, when I was 13 or 14, I kind of knew that this was what I wanted to do. My English teacher came in my freshman year and said we all had to write down our main goals in life and where we saw ourselves in five years. I wrote that I was going to be a professional boxer and had to throw it away. Someone picked it up and gave it back to me, just like a game. And less than five years later, I was a professional boxer.”
Of course, a big goal for any amateur boxer is to compete in the Olympics and hopefully win a medal, and in that respect Zayas is no different to anyone else: He too wanted to call himself an Olympian and represent his country, but unfortunately, the new age limit of 19 meant that Zayas was unable to achieve this goal at the 2020 Summer Olympics.
“It was a big disappointment for me,” he said. “I think it's disappointing for any athlete who dreams of representing their country at the Olympics and then can't do it because of some rule or technical issue.”
“For me, it wasn't that hard because it was the age difference and I didn't want to wait until 2024. If I waited, I wouldn't be here talking to you all right now. So when the opportunity to go pro was presented to me, it wasn't that hard. I took the opportunity because I didn't want to wait until 2024. Then think about all the athletes who were preparing for the 2020 Olympics. Then COVID hit. They had to start all over again. It must have been a lot harder for them than it was for me.”
As for Zayas, he turned the disappointment of missing out on the Olympics into a kind of motivation — not necessarily to try again, but to do what he's always wanted to do: go pro. He did just that in 2019, when at age 16 he became the youngest boxer to sign a pro contract in the 53 years since Top Rank was founded. But he did so with his mother's full consent first.
“We talked about it as a family, and at first my mom didn't want me to box,” he says. “She was like, 'I'm not even out of school, I'm not even an adult, and soon I'll be fighting adults.' So I went back to her and I said, 'Look, this is what I want to do. This is my life. This is what I want to dedicate myself to.' She was like, 'Okay, you can do it after you graduate from high school.' That same year, the same semester I turned pro, I started homeschooling myself and finished high school online while focusing on boxing.”
The good thing about staying in high school, beyond his academics, at least for now, is that it keeps Zayas grounded and in touch with kids his age. It also means he can feel proud to see his peers celebrate when they find out they'll be able to take their boxing career to the next level when they turn 17.
“I remember on a field trip it was announced that I was going pro,” he said. “One of my buddies was like, 'Hey, did you really sign with Top Rank?' and I was like, 'Hey, did you really sign with Top Rank?' and I was like, 'I don't know what you're talking about,' and he showed me and he was like, 'Look, here it is!' He showed me the story and all of a sudden I was like, 'Oh yeah, I signed with Top Rank!' It was amazing. Everybody was really happy for me. All my friends from high school were good people, so they were really happy for me.”
Zayas is now 18-0 with 12 knockouts. On June 8, he faces former WBO super welterweight champion Patrick Teixeira in a 10-rounder at his first major event at Madison Square Garden in New York. This will undoubtedly be the toughest test of Zayas' career so far. But considering the expectations that have followed him all this time and the fact that he has been described as everything from “Puerto Rico's beacon of hope” to “the next Miguel Cotto,” such a fight may not be so premature after all. Xander Zayas may be young and still in the learning phase in both his life and career, but some boxers hit their so-called combat adolescence much sooner than others. In Zayas' case, his voice was getting lower earlier than his peers. His chest hair grew as soon as he took off his vest.
“No matter what you do in life, there's always pressure,” Zayas said. “As a young boxer, I always feel pressure. I have the whole country behind me, so there's always pressure. I just have to stay focused, listen to my team, my family and enjoy what I'm doing, whether it's interviews, training or fighting.”
“I don't feel To be honest, I don't feel any pressure. I feel like I'm going the right way, the right direction. Everyone on my team understands the goal, we know what we want. We're getting there little by little. I'm not thinking “next this” or “next that”. I just need to be myself. I want to be happy with what I'm doing, enjoy it, and make both my family and my team proud. I want to make everyone who respects me and likes me as a professional fighter proud too.
