There might be a childhood trauma for every diamond in Edgar Berlanga’s already impressive jewellery collection.

What we might see now, or what he shows us – at least – are designer garms, flash cars, fur coats, bedazzling medallions and, more often than not, the grizzled sigh in response on social media is, “There goes that Canelo money.”

Of course, fighting Canelo Alvarez has been the equivalent of a ticket to the fistic equivalent of the Wonka Factory. Win that ticket, even if you lose the fight, and you’ll likely never have to work again.

But Berlanga, after a wide loss to Canelo last year, has more to do. That includes, he hopes, running it back with the red-headed Mexican providing he comes through his fight with Hamzah Sheeraz in New York this weekend.

That is not a gimme. In fact, it is a fine match on paper with the heavy-handed New York-Puerto Rican up against the rangy Briton who is moving up to 168lbs having boxed to a controversial draw against Carlos Adames in his previous outing.

But what Berlanga, who recently turned 28, shows us now might not only represent his career-high payday - against Canelo - but it might also explain his journey and his struggle.

If, behind each lavish purchase, there’s a trauma, you could be excused for losing count.

Berlanga’s rise was not easy.
His dad, Edgar Snr, was sent to jail (the first time) for a pair of attempted murders when Junior was a baby.

To look after the family, his mom had to work two jobs, leaving an older sister in a more maternal role.

There followed time with grandparents, in shelters, freezing walks to school and to the gym, witnessing shootouts, living in crime-riddled neighborhoods, and that was even before he took a punch in the gym.

No wonder boxing became a safe place. No wonder social media has become a platform to display what he has now. It was not always like this for Berlanga. 

It was Peter A. Levine who said: “The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect.”

Consider Berlanga’s life transformed. Know that boxing was the vehicle.

***

“I trust in my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” Berlanga tells BoxingScene when asked whether he thought he would be where he is in life. “And I always know I’m following his plan, so whatever he wanted, whatever the universe aligns for my future. One thing about me is I live day by day. But it is amazing, man. How I came from literally nothing and now I’m somebody, so it’s definitely a blessing.”

It was tough for Berlanga’s family in Brooklyn.

After initially being reluctant to talk about his father’s arrest and subsequent jail time, he explains what his dad was like back in the day.

“Um, you know, just doing bad things. He wasn't a good guy. He was in the streets and stuff, so they punished him for that, but it’s all over.”

Berlanga was just a newborn when his father went away for seven-and-a-half years following a double-shooting. The fighter understands how pivotal that time is, and seems unsure if he rose because of it or in spite of it.

“I wasn’t even raised with my dad from, from newborn to like almost eight years old,” he explains. “That’s so important to have your kid around those ages because you could mould them and me being a father, having my son – my son is three – the stuff that I’m doing, I didn’t have that with my dad. It’s so important because between the age of two to six or something, it’s when you start really moulding a kid’s brain into somebody. And I’m like, ‘Damn, just imagine if I’d had my dad at those ages, I probably would have been even more of a bigger star.”

Perhaps, although maybe here is where Belranga’s resolve was stiffened and the fighter forged.

By his own admission, there comes a point in Berlanga’s tale when boxing saves him, that it prevented him going down the alternate route that often results in jail or even death.

“Just because of the simple fact that in New York, it’s easy to get sidetracked,” he goes on. “I feel like New York is just so crazy and where we come from, from the ghetto, it’s easy to get influenced by a lot of people out there – that’s just all you see.”

Now it is easy for Berlanga to say he was “destined for greatness” and that he always had “the it factor.” 

But he knows there was a time when that was not the case, even if others thought his childlike charm offered a star quality.

“I always had something, like since I was a kid,” he maintains. “I never really knew what it was, but I knew I had something. A lot of people used to tell me I had a gift, like my presence was strong and stuff. I knew I was going to be somebody, but I just didn’t know what.”

***

Berlanga was born in Wycoff hospital in Brooklyn, in the Bushwick area.

“I walk with Brooklyn. I’m prideful about that,” he says.

He was raised there, too. 

He has also lived in the Bronx, was in a shelter at Hunts Point and in the Webster Projects for three years.

His mom moved to the Lower East Side, Baruch Houses public housing, and his scattered family lived in the Douglas Projects uptown.

“I feel like I’m from everywhere, you know.”

And because it was soon to be all he knew, life in the shelters was not hard. He didn’t understand, but there were signs of hardship everywhere.

To go to school in Manhattan, which he could attend based on his grandmother living close to the facility, he had to walk 45 minutes from the Bronx each day and take two trains to get there.

That’s not so bad in the New York spring, but in the dead of winter, bundled up?

“Yo, it was bad, bro, especially when it used to be like snow storms.”

His grandmother would pick him up after school because his mom was working one of her two jobs.

She would wake at 5am, finish her first job at 3pm, start her second at 4pm and work until midnight. She ran home and slept for three or four hours, and that was her cycle. Monday through Monday.

One day, however, Berlanga and his family returned to the shelter and all of their possessions had been stolen. Then there were shootouts in front of the building.

And some people feel a certain type of way about him buying a diamond necklace for fighting Canelo.

“The shelter was crazy, there was a lot of shootouts,” he says. “We literally were in front of my building, I saw two of them, plain sight. I heard the shots, I woke up, I looked, I started watching it. My mom grabbed me, ‘Boom.’”

Berlanga was six or seven at the time. But in the summer, the kids were able to go to summer camp, and they’d go to Bear Mountain, north of the city, and to water parks.

“So, it was pretty dope, you know.”

Every cloud…

Berlanga credits his mom with keeping him on the treadmill of school while encouraging him to go to the gym.

“She just wanted me to just be in something where I could be active and not in the streets, so she was just happy enough that knowing that from school I was going to the boxing gym and from the boxing gym I was going back home to do my homework, sleep, eat, take a shower and go right back to bed and start the thing all over.”

That was his cycle.

And when Berlanga’s dad came out, Edgar Jnr had more support.

That is why Berlanga, when talking about his success, describes it as something we rather than something he did.

“I got a team that sacrifices just as much as I do,” he adds. “When I got to go in the ring at the end of the day and take those punches, I got people on my team that sacrificed and my dad was the one who put the seed in the ground and saw it blossom.”

It was, inevitably, in Brooklyn where Berlanga’s boxing journey commenced, inside the renowned Starrett City gym.

That was where Luis Collazo, Zab Judah, Sadam Ali, Danny Jacobs, and countless others made their bones.

Berlanga’s name now stands alongside theirs. 

***

After 17 first round knockouts, Berlanga was on his way as a pro. Then he started going the distance with fighters, going to points five times and getting important rounds under his belt.

“I needed those rounds,” he admits. “I got the first round knockouts and it blew me up, it made me a very known fighter. I got 17 first round knockouts. Name any Puerto Rican fighter in Puerto Rican history that has 17 first round knockouts. Nobody. Me. I’m already a legend when it comes to that… when it comes to first round knockouts, you know what I'm saying, in that sense.”

Berlanga knows it was the rounds he got against the likes of Steve Rolls, Jason Quigley and in stopping Irishman Padraig McCrory in six rounds that led him to Canelo.

In Las Vegas, the Mexican icon dropped Berlanga in round three but he got up and went the distance.

That was a better fate than many had predicted for him.

Plenty thought Edgar might get stopped, and plenty more took exception to Berlanga’s social media victory lap in defeat.

By now, he is more than used to the detractors.

“You need those people,” he insists. “I’m starting to learn how to just love these type of people – because they make you more famous. Yo, what makes you more famous; people that love you, or people that hate you? People that hate you make you more famous, in our industry. In the realm of being a celebrity, whether you’re a rapper, or a basketball player, boxer, soccer, the hate makes you more famous.

“Really, look at Floyd Mayweather. Floyd, for me, he’s the greatest fighter in my book. He’s the greatest fighter ever. He made the most money and he fought legends. He had the most hate. You know how many people when I was growing up wanted Floyd to lose? Oh my God. They was betting their house that he’d lose, and he didn’t lose. Now I’m in that situation. I’m like, ‘Oh, I feel like him now.’ I got to just learn how to love it, because at the end of the day, those same people that talk shit, that yap away, they're gonna buy tickets, they’re gonna put on that pay-per-view, they’re gonna show that they hate me, and then it’s my job to make them love me.

“That’s what Floyd did. Floyd made everybody hate him, and then everybody loves Floyd… You got here and there people that hate him, but a lot of people love him, a lot of people respect him, and that’s something I love now. I love doing that. There are days in the gym when I’m tired or fucked up and my coach starts talking about that, ‘You got these people who want to see lose,’ and ‘they're gonna embarrass you if you lose this fight,’ and it just sparks something else in me.”

There was, after all, a time when Berlanga had nothing to lose.

***

Canelo money is a real thing. It changes lives and presents one with generational wealth. When Berlanga started flashing his possessions on Instagram, everyone said he was frittering his Canelo money away.

“It’s cool, now I’m making a lot more money,” he says when asked what changed after boxing the Mexican. “But it comes with it. I think people be hating on me. They see me, I’m opening up all these businesses, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s Canelo money.’ Like, ‘Bro, get off my shit,’ man, like, ‘Come on, bro,’ ‘at least I’m doing something good with the money, right?’ 

“First, they would say I was going to go broke. ‘Oh, this kid’s going to go broke, he’s buying jewellery.’ Now I’m buying businesses. ‘Oh, look, that’s Canelo’s money…’ ‘If it wasn’t for Canelo, you wouldn’t be getting it.”

Berlanga, often upbeat through the conversation despite the dark corners he turns down, sighs. 

“They’re always going to hate. They’re always going to have something to say. But my life’s been pretty good. It’s going to be better. After this fight, July 12, a new star is going to be born, and then the rematch with Canelo.”

***

The night that led to the arrest of Berlanga’s father, on the double murder charge, his dad was in a New York nightclub owned by John Rivera. The two were friends and, decades on, remain close.

Rivera’s son, Cristian, died aged just six from DMG/DIPG (diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma), and Berlanga and his father have subsequently been ‘all in’ in their efforts to help invest to find a cure, assisting and supporting the Cristian Rivera Foundation. 

“It’s kids that are dying with brain tumors,” explains Berlanga. “And these kids are dying and they’re three years old, four years old, and they're just going quick. 

“There’s a whole bunch of kids worldwide that’s suffering from this, and there’s no cure for it but we’ve been putting a lot, a lot of money behind it to look for the cure, to save these kids. There’s a couple kids that's been saved due to our Foundation, but a lot of kids haven't made it.”

One who didn’t make it was two-time Junior Olympic champion Jesselyn Silva. Berlanga had given her an award for her courage after one of his victories but the only fulfilment he will truly get is when a cure is discovered.

Not all childhood traumas are the same. Not all children survive theirs and maybe that’s one of the reasons why Berlanga is making the most of coming through his.