NEWARK, NJ — Nobody can accuse Keith Colon of not being ambitious. The Newark amateur standout fought an 18-fight boxer in his first fight when he was 12, then faced a 22-fight veteran in his second fight.
Colón is also making the most of his time away from the ring, attending classes four days a week at Rutgers University as a Business and Digital Marketing major, with a projected graduation date of 2025. He graduated from elite high school. St Benedict. with honors and won a college scholarship, and now takes four classes a day while participating in multiple training sessions.
Balancing a life as an elite amateur boxer and college student tests his time management skills, but the 20-year-old believes the two ambitions go hand in hand.
“You can’t just be a smart fighter in the ring, you have to be a smart fighter outside the ring. You have to put yourself in certain positions outside the ring to enhance your boxing career. It’s the same with you in the ring, you have to put yourself in perfect positions in the ring to enhance your outer self,” the 90-fight veteran said in an interview at the Ironbound Boxing Academy in Newark, where he trains with his father, Keith R. Columbus, and Muhammad Abdul Salaam.
“It’s more credibility than if someone sees me and I’m acting like a fool. I’ll see my worth appreciate after that.”
Colón has bigger ambitions lined up before graduation, with his sights set on representing his family’s native Puerto Rico at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. To get there, he has to accumulate points for his international ranking, which is why he will travel to Pueblo, Colorado for the USA Boxing International Invitational, which takes place September 12-15. Several countries will send boxers to the tournament, including the United States, the Philippines, China and France.
Colón, a 125-pound boxer, will be joined by 139-pound Dennis Cabán as the two Puerto Rican representatives in the tournament.
Colon, whose paternal family is from Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, and maternal family is from Villalba, Puerto Rico, says he hopes to bring home the gold from Colorado before traveling to Puerto Rico for another international tournament in December. Part of the enjoyment is also taking on different styles each day, like sampling from a buffet of approaches to boxing from around the world.
“You can’t see that here, the only way to see it is to get in the ring and fight it,” Colon said.
Colón has already seen a number of different styles in his amateur career, highlighted by numerous titles in his home state of New Jersey, as well as two gold medals in international tournaments and a runner-up finish at the US National Championships. 2021.
He has also worked with numerous world-class professional boxers including Chris Colbert, Richardson Hitchins and Newark boxing’s current standard-bearer, unified junior lightweight world champion Shakur Stevenson.
“The main thing I got from him had nothing to do with boxing,” Colon said of the advice Stevenson gave him. “He told me, be yourself in and out of the ring. Don’t change for anyone. If you have to change for people, then they are not for you because you are who you are.”
If he couldn’t be a boxer, Colón imagines he would be an engineer or businessman. If he could never throw another punch, he feels confident that he would still stand out in any room he walks into.
That’s why he puts in the work he does, in and out of the ring.
“I’m just filling in all the spaces. If they took boxing away from me now, they would still see me as a responsible person, a gentleman,” Colón said.
“He would still be that certain person that when he walked across the room, people were like, ‘That’s Keith Colon.'”
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]
