Rolly Romero’s will be competing this August 22nd, where he will step into the ring to defend his 147-pound WBA championship (66.7 kg) against Teofimo Lopez. But the story Romero wants told isn’t just about the belt around his waist. It’s about the years before he ever wore it, when he had nowhere to sleep and no idea how he’d turn his life around.
According to sources, Romero traces the shift back to a single night in the summer of 2017. Without a place to stay and running out of options, he says something happened that he still struggles to fully explain.
“God spoke to me July 31st, 2017, the first time he saved me, and I was homeless. I was homeless for like a month and a half, but he spoke to me and I heard his true audible voice, and I’m sitting there and I never been so mad in my life, and I start to cry,” he said.
Romero continued, “And I just heard, tell me what’s wrong. I’m like, who’s there? He tells me again, tell me what’s wrong. So I told him everything, and from one day to another, he fixed everything that happened in my life at that moment.”
That moment planted something in him, but Romero admits it took years before his faith became more than a memory he carried around. The real turning point, he says, came from an unexpected place: a supplement mix-up that sent his body and mind into a tailspin.
“It was something that we caught that I was taking and messed up my hormones. It started making sense now why everything was so off for two years. But because of that I was able to find my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who, his blood makes up for every bad I’ve ever done in my life.”
Romero pinpoints December 27th, 2023, as the day he committed to living differently. He describes it as a strange convergence, the same day his hormone troubles began was also the day he decided to change course.
“The day I started following him seriously was December 27th of 2023. So what happened, that was the day I started taking poison, but another event had happened to me that day coincidentally, and I told God I was going to start to follow him,” he said. “So that very next week I started reading the Bible because I was completely in the wrong. And that’s when I started reading the Bible, but my heart still wasn’t with him. My heart wasn’t with him completely until January 11th of 2025, so 747 days later.”
He remembers that later date in vivid, unfiltered detail, a breaking point that became the moment his faith finally took hold.
“I woke up in a panic attack crying, and I fell into sin, and I beg Jesus to help me. And I ended up on the ground in a fetal position crying for about twenty minutes. I go in the shower, I wipe my tears, and I’m still crying. I’m like, Jesus, you love me because I’m broken. He says, my son, in my eyes you are perfect.”
For Romero, that experience reframed everything, including how he saw his own worth in his lowest state.
“And it was in the, it was even in my most shameful, humiliating moment, Jesus said in his eyes, I am perfect. And he became my true love. I didn’t care about boxing. I didn’t care about, I didn’t care about women. I didn’t care about my family. I didn’t care about money. I didn’t care about nothing. Jesus became my true love.”
The Cuban-American champion now looks past his time in the ring toward a different kind of calling. Once his gloves come off for good, Romero says he wants to spend his life guiding others toward the faith that reshaped his own.
“After boxing, I want to become a pastor. Just knowing that I could save a soul, that makes me happy. That gives me more dopamine now than anything else.”
For now, though, the pulpit will have to wait. Romero has a title to defend, and Teofimo Lopez stands as the latest and perhaps steepest challenge of his career.
