“If I was not damaged, you think I’d be doing boxing?” Derek Chisora said to Tris Dixon in February. That every boxer has to be damaged to begin with to want to swap head shots for a living is a persuasive theory, and even the skeptics must admit that every boxer’s career leaves them damaged in the end.

Richard Torrez Jnr is compelling counter-evidence. At 25 years old, he is a former high school valedictorian, a chess player, a plane flier, a book reader, an occasional broadcaster, and a former member of a robotics club. Recently he has been enjoying salsa dancing. 

He is also a heavyweight boxer with a record of 12-0 – 11 of those wins are knockouts, and the 12th really was too, but Joey Dawejko spit out his mouthpiece six times en route to a disqualification before Torrez could pummel him into submission.

Torrez is training for an April 5 meeting with Guido Vianello, an Italian heavyweight who stopped Arslanbek Makhmudov in his last bout and nearly knocked out Efe Ajagba in his fight before that. Speaking to me on video from the Olympic Training Center, where he is scheduled to do some bag and mitt work after our interview, Torrez is genial and talkative, eager to talk about his lowest moments alongside his interests and hopes for the future.

We begin with the cruel and unusual punishment he is putting himself through for this bout, his first scheduled for 10 rounds. “I feel like I’m the most conditioned heavyweight boxer. I don’t take conditioning lightly,” Torrez says, his easygoing demeanor ensuring he never seems boastful, despite his inexperience and the presence of a certain Oleksandr Usyk in his division. Torrez’s training includes “ten sets of a four-minute sprint, we get about a minute off in between,” “assault bikes,” and VersaClimber workouts.

Seeing that I am unfamiliar with VersaClimbers, Torrez says, “if you go and last two minutes on that VersaClimber, come back to me. The duration we have for some of those VersaClimbers, it’s pretty grueling, you know? But I really like being in a position where I know that I’m putting my body to the max, and coming out feeling better and stronger.”

At 6ft 2ins and with a 76-inch reach, Torrez would be the smaller man against even Usyk. In old amateur bouts against Bakhodir Jalolov, such was the size disadvantage that Torrez was forced to jump into hooks in attempts to land. Being the smaller man seems not to faze him as he talks about Vianello: “I think Guido’s a great fighter. He’s a fellow Olympian. He’s tall, he’s lengthy, and he comes to fight […] honestly, I thought he won that fight [against Ajagba].

“With that being said, I’m super confident about my abilities, and I think that his style and my style kind of plays in my favor. I’m a smaller heavyweight, I’m left-handed, I use my angles.”

Along with Jared “Big Baby” Anderson (who Torrez once lived with at the Olympic Training Center), Torrez is the next hope for a great American heavyweight – not an easy cross to bear, given the sheer skill of the legends in previous decades.

“I’ve had people, day before my fight, be like, ‘Richard, you better win. I put my house on you. I bet my house on you, Richard. I need you to win.’ I’ve had people come to me saying, ‘oh, this guy’s nothing.’ There’s a pressure to prove people right and a pressure to prove people wrong.” 

Torrez speaks of this seemingly nightmarish responsibility like it’s commonplace. An even larger burden comes from within.

“But at the end of the day, I feel like there’s just this intrinsic pressure of yourself, of wanting to know that what you did and what you sacrificed your entire life was worth it. The first time I got in the ring and sparred, I was four. The first time I went to nationals, I was ten. I haven’t lost in the United States in the last ten years. There’s so much that I’ve sacrificed – not only me, but my entire family – and I wanna prove that those sacrifices weren’t in vain. That’s kind of what the biggest pressure is, you know?”

Now that Anderson has taken a thundering loss to Martin Bakole, the pressure has shifted even further onto Torrez. But Anderson remains high in Torrez’s esteem.

“People are always saying, ‘oh, Jared got rushed, Jared did this, Jared shouldn’t have taken that fight.’ I’m a firm believer that if you want to be someone in this game, you have to fully believe that you’re the best. And I can tell that Jared fully believes he’s the best, you know? And that’s why he took that fight. I’m not knocking him for taking that fight.

“Boxing’s boxing, man. I feel like people shouldn’t really take the undefeated record to heart. I feel like that kind of gets us away from the sport.” Bakole would surely agree – one fight removed from his destruction of Anderson, he lay at the feet of Joseph Parker. 

Torrez’s approach to matchmaking is simple. At this point in his career, Torrez says, he doesn’t have enough fame or leverage to have real autonomy over who he fights. Leverage comes to those with high rankings and belts, neither of which are Torrez’s possession. He hopes to have that sway one day, but until then, he’s content to go where the wind takes him.

“What happens with me is, I get a call from my dad. My dad says, ‘hey, do you want to fight this guy?’ I say ‘yes.’ Every single opponent, that’s how it happened. My dad and Top Rank, my dad being my manager, they are the ones that do all the discussions. I’m very thankful to live in my cone of ignorance. All I do is, I get to fight.”

Torrez’s philosophy puts a different spin on a recent video clip of Bob Arum insisting that Torrez’s career would be managed more carefully than Anderson’s. Arum said that Torrez was offered a fight in Saudi Arabia, but he and his father turned it down “no matter what the money was.” 

“I did not know I got offered a fight in Saudi,” Torrez says unequivocally. “If anything happened, that was my team.” He recalls that he himself was a bit confused about Arum’s statement, since news of the Saudi offer never actually reached him, and made phone calls for clarity on the situation. The quote is an enlightening peek behind the scenes of how little a fighter might have to do with their matchmaking, and would surely disappoint the legions of fans intent on accusing various fighters of ducking others.

“I do not say no to fights,” Torrez affirms, “and I’m one thousand percent truthful in that.”

 

***

 

The first time Torrez fought Jalolov was at the 2019 World Amateur Championships. Torrez, then 20, stepped to the 25-year-old Jalolov – who already had six pro bouts, all of them knockout wins. The size difference was comical, as was the experience gap. At the end of the first round, Jalolov knocked Torrez fully unconscious with a shattering left hand. 

The knockout clip went viral. If that indignity weren’t enough, Torrez recalls Jalolov knocking on his door after the bout to offer commiserations – with somebody else in tow, filming the interaction for social media fodder.

“He is the reason I don’t post my knockouts,” Torrez said.

In the Olympic final in 2021, Torrez again fought Jalolov, and again lost – but he went the distance, and landed some hard shots. After the fight, Torrez paused in front of Jalolov, as if he was preparing to congratulate or hug him. Jalolov instead released a guttural yell and chest-barged Torrez out of the way as he walked to his corner. 

Jalolov is also under the Top Rank banner and has been imposing as a professional, running up his record to 14-0 (14 KOs). But he has been inactive of late, curtailing his professional career to fight in the amateurs and prolong his Olympic eligibility. In 2024, closing in on 30 years old, Jalolov won gold again.

“I’m not sure if I agree with that too much, of a professional of that magnitude being able to go back and fight these up-and-coming guys who are, like, 19,” Torrez says, though he makes a point of saying that he does not share a native language with the Uzbek Jalolov and doesn’t know his character.

Before that, when asked about Jalolov, Torrez still showed no fear: “I want the fight. I definitely want the fight.”

 

***

 

Listening to Torrez speak articulately about boxing and long talks with friends about trying to be successful in life, and with the knowledge that he has other aptitudes, the question of whether he is concerned about long-term damage begs to be asked. He is young, and trusts his father-trainer-manager Richard Torrez Snr implicitly: “If my dad told me to drop my hands and quack like a duck in the ring, I’m gonna do that, you know?”

But boxing’s risks can only be managed, not ignored. “CTE [Chronic traumatic encephalopathy] is always in the back of my head,” Torrez says. “It might be in my head right now.

“I told everybody that if my dad wasn’t in my corner, I wouldn’t be boxing. He’s the one guy I know who isn’t in it for the money, he’s in it for my well-being. And he’s in it for me. Because I have that, and I know that if he ever sees me start to slip a little or go south, it’ll end right there.”

Torrez doesn’t fit the mold of the classic great boxer – fully aware and conscious of a boxer’s peril, skilled in other avenues. The latter figures to make his exit ramp from boxing, spoken of as a drug by so many former participants, less treacherous than usual. He seems to be balancing his fierce love of the sport with caution so far, and trusts his father to deliver the latter.

“I’m reading. I’m taking the right foods and vegetables to maintain strong brain health. I’m preparing the right away in order to not be one of those guys who needs subtitles when they talk.”