Bullied as a kid, she channeled her response into a U.S. Olympic boxing career

Taking her grandmother’s advice, Lozano joined her local boxing gym.

“I went and I loved it,” she said. “I fell in love with it. It was super hot there. But I loved the fact that even shadow boxing, even knowing the basic things without actually hitting a person … (it) gave me so much confidence as a kid. Like, ‘Damn, I know how to fight.”

Often she was the only female fighter in the gym. But she embraced her new sanctum. 

“It got to a point where the guys didn’t want to fight me anymore because I would leave them bleeding,” Lozano said. “I’d hit them too much, or they just didn’t want to get beat up by a girl. So they got mad. They got so angry.”

Lozano developed an edge inside the ring with her persistent work ethic. After just one month of training, she was invited to join her gym’s competition team. And it didn’t take long for her to start making a name for herself in boxing by winning titles. 

Within two years, she became recognized in national boxing competitions. In 2015 and 2016, Lozano won the National Junior Olympics. And in 2018 and 2019, she won the National Golden Gloves Championships. Her fierce fighting style even produced a nickname given by her grandmother.

“She called me “La Traviesa (troublemaker),” Lozano said. “I was causing chaos, mayhem.”

But a profound moment occurred in August 2019 when Lozano lost one of her biggest supporters. After being unable to contact her grandmother for days, Lozano personally discovered she passed away from a heart attack after visiting her home.

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“I remember looking at her and I don’t know why I had this urge, but I ended up just slightly flipping her over,” she recalled.  “So I flipped her back and I guess that’s the last confirmation. My body, my conscience needed to confirm. That’s when I just started screaming.”

Following her grandmother’s death, Lozano’s coaches encouraged her to postpone her next fight. But Lozano remained committed to honoring her memory.

“I promised my grandma I was going to fight,” Lozano said.

And although she won, her triumph gave way to grief.

She says she started “getting angry … and not for the right reasons.”

“It just took over me completely. I became completely blinded and I’d make people hate me because I didn’t like myself,” she said. “I want to be alone. And so from then on, I started seeking help because I was like, ‘okay, let me get into therapy.’”

Seven months after her grandma’s death, the grief was still there, but Lozano finally felt peace. And her calmness showed in the ring. Lozano would win the USA Boxing Elite National Championships for three consecutive years starting in 2020.

Now she’s looking to carry her troublemaker nickname into the ring in Paris, where representing not only the U.S. but her hometown in Texas.

“It gives me chills because it’s crazy,” she said. “I made it. Every single ounce of literal blood, sweat and tears, every sacrifice, everything I’ve been through in my life, they were all worth it.”

And with the Paris Games just approaching, Lozano has thought about the significance of being an Olympian for the first time.

“It feels so good to be able to represent not just the U.S. itself, but also Mexico and Latinas,” she said. “And just to be the biggest step towards Mexican American, Latinas and Latinos, that anything is possible. That no matter what trauma you went through, what obstacle, how hard life took you, done it, dragged you by the hair, by the feet, anything that you can if you really wanted it that bad, if you really want to make a change, if you’re truly dedicated, disciplined, you want to be the change for you and others.”