KYLE — Anthony Lona, 17, was tired of receiving second place, which led him to consistently train and, ultimately, secure his victory at the USA National Boxing Championships.
His father was always into football, so it made sense, Lona explained, to play the sport, but then, one day, they drove past a boxing gym and he immediately wanted to join.
Eventually, his father gave in when he was 8 years old and Lona has never looked back: “I just fell in love with the sport because it’s one of the only sports that you have full control over the outcome.”
“Instead of having to go with the team and having to worry about if someone else is going to play perfect and worry about other people messing up, here in boxing, it’s more like: you train or get out-trained,” explained Lona. “You have control about what you do and how you win.”
And out-train is exactly what Lona had to do to finally win the championship. According to the boxer, he has participated in this same event more than five times and each time was left with the same result: second place.
This year, though, he knew it would be different. It wasn’t until a fight earlier in 2024 that the 17-year-old realized he was too comfortable. Settled by split decision, Lona knew he needed to step up his game.
After attending Lehman High School for two years, he transferred to Live Oak Academy to graduate early.
The boxer got a strength-and-conditioning coach, ran every day after work and continued to practice — amounting to five hours a day. Then, he participated in the South Texas Amateur Boxing Association LBC Championships in San Marcos the week of Oct. 9, 2024, where he won his weight-class and was invited by USA Boxing to the National Championships.
Lona traveled to Richmond, Virginia the week before Christmas and was placed into a bracket, where he competed in three rounds prior to achieving his victory.
“I just felt like all the times I had not to go out with my friends or not eat something that I wanted to eat or not watch a movie with my family or the funeral that I missed to go to the tournament … I felt like everything paid off. Everything’s finally falling into place,” Lona stressed.
Up next for the champion is participating in events with the USA Boxing team, after he was selected — the only one in his weight class in the nation, said Lona — to travel to Germany to represent them later in the year at the U19 World Championship.
Lona hopes to one day be a professional boxer, but for now, he states that he will “keep working, [put] some more work in and some more work. Just have to keep working and out work everybody else.”
