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Add FightsATW on GoogleLooking up to an older sibling is a common occurrence for many of us, and a cheat code for many athletes. An older sibling can be a superhero-like figure who does everything better than you. For Lorenzo Patricio and Marcus Luther, this was the fabric that formed their foundation as they competed on the USA Boxing team, hoping to be part of the U.S. Olympic team in 2028.
Patricio recently won a gold medal, defeating Jiamao Zhang in China in the World Boxing Cup second stage at 122lbs. The win was extra special as Patricio defeated Zhang in his home country and made him the first international gold medalist from USA Boxing in 2026.
“When I was warming up, my coaches and I were talking about how I was going to be the villain tonight,” Patricio told FightsATW. “They put us as the main event, the last bout of the evening; my coaches and I kept saying ‘let’s be the villain,’ and show the world who I am.”
For Patricio, 19, the victory was a long road paved by his eldest sister, and standout amateur boxer in her own right, Shera Mae Patricio. They are all trained by their father, Lyndon Patricio, who was a boxer and kickboxer before raising a large family of 11 in Hawaii. His early goals were not Olympic medals or world titles. He wanted to spar his oldest sister and the best boxer in the family.
“As I got older and bigger, I always wanted to spar my oldest sister,” Patricio said. “When I was finally able to spar her, I was like, ‘Dang, this is my time to show up and prove myself.’”
Shera Mae had been number one in the country as an amateur. She was on Team USA with ambitions of being an Olympian, and all of her siblings looked up to.
“Every day I would go to the gym and ask my dad to spar Shera,” Patricio said. “He would tell me: ‘No’.”
He can’t remember what changed, but he remembered asking one day and getting a different answer.
“Put the gear on,” Patricio remembered his father saying when he asked to spar with Shera Mae on one fateful day. “I remember being all excited, telling myself I need to do this.”
Patricio admits that he doesn’t know if Shera Mae held back, but it was a level-up moment as a fighter. He wasn’t just another person in the gym; he had set a goal and achieved it, even if it was just sparring his sister.
Fast-forward to his most recent tournament. Lorenzo followed in his sister’s footsteps again. She fought in Thailand in 2024 to qualify for the 2024 Olympics.
“Watching her fight from the stands reminded me of how it was for my fight in China,” Patricio said. “It made me think that I knew how she felt. It was a full circle moment.”
Marcus Luther
Luther is a bit different. The 65kg fighter is already being touted as one of the blue-chip pro prospects, as he hopes to make a 2028 Olympic bid. He won a silver medal, losing in the finals to France’s Hugo Grau. The big takeaway was that Luther defeated Brazil’s Yuri Falcao, the nephew of Yamaguchi and Esquivo Falcao. Falcao also had won a silver medal in the 2025 World Championships and a bronze at the 2023 Pan-Am Games. What you look for in a good amateur is credibility, and a win like that adds substance to the excitement around Luther.
At USA Boxing national tournaments, it isn’t uncommon to see the ring Luther fights in swarmed with spectators. When he lands, it is heard. It is a call back to when my friend saw Erickson Lubin fight in Salt Lake City, Utah at the USA National Golden Gloves in 2013. The feeling was that Lubin was just that much more advanced than his peers, and hit harder, too. The way Lubin looked in that tournament was described as reminding me of the 2019 Olympic Last-Chance Qualifiers in Oxnard, California, when Najee Lopez put on a dominant display as the week went on; more and more people crowded the ring he was around.
The difference is Luther is at the point where when he fights, people watch. It isn’t word-of-mouth; it is a weekly performance thing. It is simply that he can knock people out, and in amateur boxing, that is rare. Everyone wants to see if that will happen.
“A lot of people go in there just to win, but every time I go in there, I try to give the people a show,” Luther told FightsATW. “Once I started getting the knockouts and the stoppages, more people started watching. The next thing you know I am in the championship [bout] and the whole arena at my ring to watch me fight.”
Luther recalls stopping a fighter at Rosecroft Raceway in Fort Washington, Maryland, in Golden Gloves qualifiers. The stoppage went viral on his social media pages. The one that stood out to him was a fight in Detroit where he had lost the first two rounds to Quintin Zastrow. He came back to stop Zastrow in the third and final round.
“He had basically won the fight,” Luther said. “I came out and stopped him in the championship fight. That was a big one for me.”
Trained by his father, William Luther Sr, Marcus started boxing at 6. In the same vein as the Patricio family, Luther found his inspiration from the gym and his older brother, William Luther Jr.
“Having a big brother is like having someone to compete with that you can’t beat,” Luther said. “You’re always trying to get better, but my brother is three years older than me.”
When you ask around the gyms in the DMV (Washington D.C., Maryland, Virginia), they all say one thing about Luther: he works hard. That work ethic has carried over to his fights. Luther fights with fierceness. The region he comes from is known for a physical high guard style, and Luther draws comparisons to some of the sport’s biggest names because of the excitement he brings.
It all leads back to those early days as a six-year-old hitting the bag trying to compete with his nine-year-old big brother. Sometimes it is the things you grow up with that define you, and now as one of the most promising prospects in boxing, Luther keeps a hunger that he started with: a chip on his shoulder and a want to be the best, remembering a time when he wasn’t.
“I couldn’t outrun him; I couldn’t do anything better than him,” Luther said of those early days training with his big brother. “You are competing with someone who is just going to make you get even better.”
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