Amateur star Marco Romero wastes no time, turns pro month after winning National Golden Gloves

There was little time for Marco Romero to celebrate after crossing off the final item on his amateur boxing bucket list. Two days after winning the 2024 National Golden Gloves title at 165 pounds on May 18, Romero was back in training for his professional debut.

It’s no small feat to get right back into the gym after a grueling tournament that saw the 18-year-old fight five times in six days, during which he missed his high school graduation and had to be handed his diploma in a special ceremony afterwards. But with his pro debut set for Saturday, June 15 at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland, Maine, there was no time to spare.

Romero will face MMA vet turned boxer Jonathan Gary (2-1) in a four-round super middleweight bout. It’s a relatively lowkey debut for a decorated national champion, but Romero says his father, Salvador Romero, helped him put it all into perspective.

“We got back home and like my dad says, you just gotta put everything in the rearview. From where I made it to in the amateurs, now I’m starting up in the pros,” said Romero, who hails from Olathe, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City with approximately 140,000 residents.

“I just want to be as successful as I was in the amateurs in the pros. So we got right to work quick.”

Romero’s National Golden Gloves final bout against New York’s Melvin Martinez

For Romero, it’s probably easier listing the amateur tournaments he didn’t win than the ones he did. In a career that began at age seven, Romero won Junior Olympics three times, National Silver Gloves six times, USA National Qualifiers five times and the USA National Championships four times, the last of which was his first at the elite level

He had approximately 135 fights, losing just five times, with his last defeat coming by way of split decision in the finals of the 2019 National Junior Olympics. An amateur of his caliber would normally have been on USA Boxing national team, traveling the world and working towards a spot in the Olympics, but circumstances beyond his control kept him out of international competition.

Romero had made the U.S. national team in March of 2020 and was scheduled to travel to Bulgaria for the Emil Jechev Tournament, only to see the tournament canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the weight he competed at, 165 pounds, was eliminated from Olympic competition. At 5’10”, Romero found himself too big to squeeze into the 156-pound division and too small for the 176-pounders.

In addition, the minimum age for Olympic boxers was raised from 18 to 19, meaning Romero just wasn’t destined to compete in Paris.

“My first dream was to go to the Olympics and bring back a gold medal but unfortunately 165 wasn’t a qualifying weight class. After I found that out the dream was just to go pro. I’ve always said that my biggest dream was to bring back a world championship back to Kansas. Kansas isn’t really a boxing state so my thing is to bring back a world championship to Kansas and give inspiration to all the other kids in Kansas to pursue boxing and put boxing on the map. So that one day Kansas can be looked at as one of the boxing states,” said Romero, a Mexican-American whose father is from the Mexican state of Michoacán, while his mother Sendy is from Guanajuato.

Boxing wasn’t Romero’s first passion, however. At age six, he began playing soccer in recreation leagues, while his brother, who is two years younger, would nag their father to bring him to the boxing gym. Soon after the two switched roles, with the brother now playing soccer in high school.

For the past eight years, Romero has trained under John Brown, a veteran of nearly 60 years in the boxing industry who is also his manager. Brown also trained former heavyweight contender Tommy Morrison during the peak of his career from 1988 to 1993, and guided Cam F. Awesome to international amateur success. Finding sparring is difficult, given that Kansas isn’t a boxing hotbed, and few boxers are willing to shoulder the expense to travel to him for sparring.

Romero with his National Golden Gloves title belt and Golden Boy award as fighter of the tournament. Photo by Sendy Romero

Romero did get some quality gym work prior to the National Golden Gloves when he joined Eric Priest, the Golden Boy Promotions middleweight prospect who came from his gym in Kansas, at his training camp in Los Angeles. Romero concedes that he’ll have to travel more to get more sparring work.

Priest (13-0, 8 knockouts) says he has known Romero since Romero was nine years old, and says what makes him a special fighter is his work ethic and his grounded, humble mindset.

“He comes from a great family, has great morals and values. I can vouch for him as a person as well as a boxer. He really is the combination of a hard hitter and a good boxer,” said Priest.

“Marco is fast, has great head movement and is very mature in his overall ring movement. Solid combos. Marco fights to win, he understands this is hurt business.”

Romero likens his style to that of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, though he also cites fellow Kansas natives turned boxing stars Victor Ortiz and Brandon Rios as role models growing up.

“I would describe myself as a pressure fighter who comes forward but with intelligence. I like to break people down, pressuring forward, body shots, power punching but also being slick with my head movement and my footwork,” said Romero.

Romero already has his second fight scheduled for July 26 in Atlantic City, and says the plan is to work his way down to 154 pounds. He believes he can build his record to 5-0 before the end of the year, and then test the markets of big time boxing.

“This is all becoming surreal to me. Hopefully next year I’ll sign with a good promotion like Top Rank, Golden Boy, Matchroom, something like that,” said Romero.

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Saturday’s card is being promoted by Art Pelullo’s Banner Promotions and Bobby Russo, who owns the Portland Boxing Club and is national president of Golden Gloves of America. The card will be headlined by bantamweight contender Dylan Price (18-0, 12 KOs) in a ten-round bout against Ernesto Irias (15-9-1, 9 KOs), plus light heavyweight Kendrick Ball Jr. (22-1-3, 13 KOs) against Britton Norwood (13-5-1, 10 KOs) in a ten-round bout, plus the professional debut of local favorite and last year’s New England Golden Gloves champion Wade Faria in a four-round middleweight bout.

The event will be the first boxing show at Cross Insurance Arena since 1994, when Joey Gamache defended his WBA lightweight title against Orzubek Nazarov back when the venue was known as the Cumberland County Civic Center.

Tickets range from $35 to $153, with the event starting at 6:30 p.m.

Ryan Songalia has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler and The Guardian, and is part of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism Class of 2020. He can be reached at [email protected].