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From youngest to youngest: Xander Zayas thrilled to be on brink of becoming a world champion
Xander Zayas flashes a megawatt smile sitting on a recent Zoom conference with DAZN News.
In clashing with Jorge Garcia for the vacant WBO super welterweight world championship Saturday night at The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York City, Zayas’ young life is on the brink of achieving an early full circle.
The Puerto Rican sensation was just 16 when he signed his first professional boxing contract with Top Rank in 2019, making him the youngest fighter to ever ink a deal with the legendary promotional company.
Now, with a win over Garcia, the 22-year-old would become the youngest world champion across boxing’s current landscape.
Eagerly anticipating the moment with imagery is something that is starting to hit Zayas hard.
“When I first signed my first professional contract at 16, I was at the gym and the only thing I could think of is scream and run. That’s what I did,” Zayas tells DAZN News, before wondering what it will feel like to hear his name attached to being a world champion Saturday night.
“I don’t know if I’m going to cry, I don’t know if I’m going to jump, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he continues. “It’s a feeling that you could only feel once it happens. It’s something that means so much. I’ve been working so hard my whole life for this moment that when it happens, I can’t tell you how I’m going to react.
“I wouldn’t be able to tell you how I’m going to celebrate it because it’s going to be a very, very special moment.”
Since fighting his first pro bout in October 2019, Zayas has ran up a record of 21-0 with 13 KOs, having last defeated Slawa Spomer by ninth-round TKO in February.
Fighting Garcia (33-4, 26 KOs) for the vacant WBO 154-pound world title is an opportunity that came about in an ironic way.
Zayas was the mandatory challenger to then-unified super welterweight world champion Sebastian Fundora, though the latter opted to fight Tim Tszyu in a rematch last weekend, instead of honoring the fight against the Puerto Rican rising star. That decision paved the way for the WBO title to be vacated.
“At the beginning it was frustrating not being able to fight Sebastian Fundora after being the mandatory but I also understand that it’s business,” Zayas says, “and maybe it was better business for him and his team to fight Tim Tszyu.”
Fundora wound up stopping Tszyu at the end of the seventh round to retain his WBC title.
“He decided not to fight me and that’s that,” Zayas said. “Hopefully in the future, we’ll get it going.”
Perhaps then, Zayas will have his own title to bring to a unification bout.
And such a situation would mark another first in his blossoming career which has seen him already grow from a dreaming kid to booming prospect with an exciting style and now knocking on the door to world champion certification.
“Looking back, I could tell that kid, all that hard work paid off,” Zayas says. “All the dedication, all the early mornings, all the sacrifice that me, my family made, it’s paying off.
“I’m finally here.”Watch the best fighters with a DAZN subscription
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