Marco Romero spent most of his life driving by the Embassy Suites in Olathe, Kansas, never thinking that one day he would headline a boxing fight card there.
But there was Romero, a super middleweight from Olathe, last Saturday knocking out Javier Dario Aragon in two rounds inside the hotel complex as the hometown phenom.
Romero, 10-0 (9 KOs), is a 19-year-old who already has double-digit wins as a professional. Early on, he vowed to bring a fight back to Olathe, a town of about 140,000, located southwest just outside of Kansas City.
“It was a dream come true,” Romero said. “Ever since I started winning national tournaments and fighting across the country, there has always been talk about bringing it back to my hometown.”
Romero doesn’t know the exact number of people who attended Saturday’s fight, but he knows the venue's maximum capacity was 1,100 and believes it was near that number. Romero noted that people from his past whom he hadn’t spoken with in years were among those who attended the fight, and he found the support humbling.
“The venue is right in front of the soccer fields where my brother plays during club season,” said Romero, who is trained by John Brown at Turner Boxing Academy in Kansas City. “It was amazing to drive by it for quite some time, and I never imagined my hometown would be there, and then it happened there.”
In June, Romero fought in Wichita, Kansas, on the undercard of former heavyweight titleholder Deontay Wilder’s return to the ring. Before that, he had fought nearby only once – in Topeka, Kansas – with the rest of his fights occurring out of state. His win over Aragon on Saturday gave some of Romero’s local fans a chance to see him fight in person, without the burden of travel expenses.
“To be 10 minutes away from where I live and where I went to school is amazing,” Romero said. “Especially with the performance I had.”
Lucas Ketelle is the author of “Inside the Ropes of Boxing,” a guide for young fighters, a writer for BoxingScene and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Find him on X at @BigDogLukie.
