WASHINGTON — "I kind of cried," Lamont Roach Jr. said. "I held it back because the cameras were on me."
The cameras did not catch Lamont Roach Jr's tears, but they did capture him accomplishing a lifelong dream. Just a few days after Thanksgiving, for the entire world to see, Lamont Jr. defeated Hector Garcia and was crowned WBA Super Featherweight Champion.
"It's almost unreal," Roach Jr. said. "Less than one percent of the world is world champion boxers. I'm a part of that."
But to enjoy the good times, Roach Jr. had to endure the bad ones. In 2019, Lamont Roach Jr. competed for The WBO Super Featherweight Championship and lost.
"I had just turned 24, fighting for the world championship, thinking I'm going to be one of the youngest champions in boxing at the time," Roach Jr. said. "I came up a little short and I think people wrote me off after that."
Lamont Roach Jr's father and trainer, Lamont Roach Sr. says the 2019 loss made his son a better boxer.
"We took so much out of that fight that made him hungrier, made him learn from mistakes," Roach Sr. said. "We watched that tape. We looked over our mistakes and we corrected them. And we knew coming into this fight, we were more than prepared to reverse that."
There's another important factor that helped Lamont Roach Jr. score the biggest win of his career; his two-year-old son, Amari. While Lamont Jr. was fighting to become a champion in Las Vegas, Amari was home in DC, cheering his dad to victory.
"I'm not just fighting for myself," Roach Jr. said. I'm fighting to provide for him too. Now I got somebody that look up to me and depend on. So that gives me all the motivation to carry out the dream that I started with my dad, with my cousin to be a world champ and provide for my family, make my family proud."
With Friday's 21 to 0 victory over Broadneck, the Pumas have now six state titles.