Ryan Hafey/PBC
Outside the boxing ring, Rolly Romero pursues an even greater passion.
This weekend, Romero will face one of the toughest tests in the ring when he defends his 147-pound WBA championship against Teofimo Lopez on August 22nd on DAZN and Amazon Prime PPV.
THE FIRST FACE-OFF 😤
Rolly Romero and Teofimo Lopez face-off for the first time ahead of their WBA welterweight title fight on Aug 22nd 🔥#RollyTeofimo live on DAZN & DAZN on Prime 📺 pic.twitter.com/AwcWdojVyr
— Ring Magazine (@ringmagazine) July 9, 2026
Before becoming one of boxing’s biggest names, Romero credits his faith with turning his life around when he found himself homeless for a brief period.
“God spoke to me July 31st, 2017, the first time he saved me, and I was homeless. I was homeless for like a month and a half, but he spoke to me and I heard his true audible voice, and I’m sitting there and I never been so mad in my life, and I start to cry. And I just heard, tell me what’s wrong. I’m like, who’s there? He tells me again, tell me what’s wrong. So I told him everything, and from one day to another, he fixed everything that happened in my life at that moment.”
Romero says he didn’t start taking religion seriously until he found himself taking supplements that messed with his hormones and led to him having a severe bout of depression.
“It was something that we caught that I was taking and messed up my hormones. It started making sense now why everything was so off for two years. But because of that I was able to find my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who— his blood makes up for every bad I’ve ever done in my life.”
“The day I started following him seriously was December 27th of 2023. So what happened, that was the day I started taking poison, but another event had happened to me that day coincidentally, and, I told God I was going to start to follow him. So that very next week I started reading the Bible because I was completely in the wrong. And that’s when I started reading the Bible, but my heart still wasn’t with him. My heart wasn’t with him completely until January 11th. Of 2025, so 747 days later.”
“I woke up in a panic attack crying, and, I fell into sin, and I beg Jesus to help me. And I, I ended up on the ground in a fetal position crying for about twenty minutes. I go in the shower, I wipe my tears, and I’m still crying. I’m like, Jesus, you love me because I’m broken. He says, my son, in my eyes you are perfect.”
“And it was in the— it was Even in my most shameful, humiliating moment, Jesus said in his eyes, I am perfect. And he became my true love. I didn’t care about boxing. I didn’t care about— I didn’t care about women. I didn’t care about my family. I didn’t care about money. I didn’t care about nothing. Jesus became my true love.”
The Cuban-American boxer says he now wants to become a pastor after his boxing career is over.
“After boxing, I want to become a pastor. Just knowing that I could save a soul, that makes me happy. That gives me more dopamine now than anything else.”