COLORADO SPRINGS, Col. -- Amateur boxing can sometimes feel like a clinical world where boxers show their skills in brief bouts and then move on, with their personalities and showmanship not becoming apparent until they remove their headgear and turn professional.
That isn’t the case for Lorenzo Patricio, an 18-year-old from Honolulu, Hawaii. The charismatic technical virtuoso doesn’t just win his fights in dominant fashion: he puts on a show. Of all the weapons at his disposal, his signature move is one he learned from his time learning kickboxing, the Superman punch. While it serves a practical purpose in kickboxing and MMA because it feints a kick and comes as a punch instead, Patricio uses it more to demonstrate his dominance while getting a reaction from the crowd.
“We started it kind of as a joke. We were playing around me and my teammate. We're like, ‘oh, what if we just throw a superman punch?,’” said Patricio. “We did it one tournament, and I just kept rolling with it as my signature punch.”
Patricio has been on a roll of late, having been named to the USA Boxing High Performance team as the country’s 121lbs representative for international competition. His first assignment as part of their elite team will come next week, when he performs in the Strandja Tournament in Bulgaria. He will kick off the tournament for Team USA on Monday morning U.S. time against Michael Trinidade, a 2024 Olympian from Brazil.
Patricio, who has been training at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, says he got a glimpse at some of the talent he will face when they held a multi-nation training camp in Colorado, with boxers from China, Finland, Great Britain and Kazakhstan taking part.
“I got a good experience. I know what they kind of do. I know I’m way better than them. And I know I just got to do what I got to do. Do my thing out there, show up and show out,” said Patricio.
Boxing isn’t something that only recently came into his life. Lorenzo is a member of the Patricio family, a boxing dynasty in Hawaii where his father, Lyndon Snr, is the winningest coach of recent times in American amateur boxing. His older sister, Shera Mae, was an 11-time national champion and is now a 7-0 pro who will fight February 28, while his older brother, Lyndon Jnr, is a 4-1 (2 KOs), pro. His other siblings, Sheelyn, Landon, Leighton and Shania, are all multiple time national champions.
Lorenzo began to train at age five, but didn’t start competing until he was eight, having been focusing on football and wrestling before that.
The siblings all train together, as was on exhibition this particular day at Colorado Springs’ Triple Threat Gym, where Lorenzo did pads with their father, while Shera Mae shadowboxed, and Leighton and Landon, both competing at the USA Boxing International Open just up the road in Pueblo, warmed up nearby. Lorenzo says there’s always a sense of rivalry, but also unity.
“We’re always trying to one up each other. It's a friendly competition, but we all support each other,” said Lorenzo, a 15-time national champion.
“We all love it and support each other, but it's just a friendly competition, and that just helps us grow and be better.”
International competition is nothing new for Lorenzo, who spent two years on USA Boxing’s High Performance team as a youth boxer. He competed in just one overseas tournament, taking the 110lbs gold at the 2025 Brandenburg Cup in Germany, but also established himself as the best boxer in his division by winning the under-19 world championship in 2024. In between those feats, he showed off his abilities at the 2025 National Golden Gloves while representing Pennsylvania - where he and his family train at Philadelphia’s Kaoz Boxing - winning the gold there as well.
Through it all, Lorenzo managed to remain focused on his studies, graduating Summa Cum Laude from Mililani High School in Hawaii, a point that made his father particularly proud.
“He was so good in school, he's all straight As in school, actually. I’m so blessed that he did great in school,” said Lyndon Snr, a former national level amateur in the 90s who had been a teammate of former world champion and Olympian Brian Viloria.
Lorenzo, whose parents’ families hail from Ilocos Norte and Leyte provinces in the Philippines, says he had been inspired by Manny Pacquiao, and was often called “Mini Pacquiao” by others in the gym, but says it was Vasiliy Lomachenko, with his angles, footwork and ring IQ, who had been his biggest stylistic influence.
Lyndon Snr believes his son will do well at the international level as an adult, and cites as evidence how he performed in sparring with Andy Cruz ahead of Cruz’s fight with Raymond Muratalla last month.
“All the pros have a hard time with him. We just sparred with Andy Cruz, and he gave Andy Cruz hell, like crazy sparring. Andy Cruz told him he's so fast that he couldn't even keep up this Cuban style with him,” said Lyndon Snr.
As a member of the national team, with no one on the horizon to challenge his supremacy in the States, Lorenzo is on the trajectory to make the Olympic team in 2028. His sister, Shera Mae, had fallen just one win short of qualifying in 2024, and he says he learned from her example as he pursues that goal.
What does he envision for himself down the line? The answer is nothing short of dominance at the amateur and professional level.
“Right now we're just going step by step, so we'll see what we're doing as of now. The 2028 Olympics is my goal but if something shows up and we get a good offer or something, then we'll see,” said Lorenzo, who adds that his dream scenario as a pro includes “being a world champion, unifying all the belts, and just being one of the greats.”
Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for BoxingScene.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ryansongalia.
