How Team USA boxer Jennifer Lozano recovered after losing her greatest supporter

Here comes trouble. 

That's likely what opponents of Jennifer Lozano will be thinking as the 21-year-old Team USA boxer makes her way to the ring at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Her nickname, after all, is "Traviesa" — which means "Troublemaker."

It was bestowed upon her as a rambunctious child by her late grandmother, who would later become instrumental in Lazano's boxing career as her top supporter and greatest inspiration.

"She called me 'La Traviesa' when I was a kid because I was everywhere," Lozano said on NBC's "My New Favorite Olympian" podcast. "I was causing chaos, mayhem."

But even when Lozano wasn't looking for trouble, it had a way of finding her, shaping the person she has become as she persevered through adversity, loss and grief.  

"Growing up in my time, a lot of people called me crazy and said I wasn't going to make it and said that I was better off in the kitchen or helping out my mom or doing other things than boxing, that I was never going to make it out," Lozano said. "That's what I want to change."

As a child, Lozano's grandmother would take care of her while her parents were at work. Her mother would drive from their bordertown in Laredo, Texas to her grandmother's house in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico — crossing the border and the Juárez-Lincoln International Bridge on a near daily basis.

Being inside her grandmother's home was a safe haven, but Lozano said the surrounding area at the time was riddled with violence, particularly after sundown.

"You had to leave before sunset, like way before sunset, because the cartel at that time when I was growing up, when I was a kid, was very strong. Very, very strong," she said. "It was all over to the point where shootings were every night, a lot of people getting killed and a lot of rebellious, rebellious things going on at night."

But during the day, Lozano developed a bond with her grandmother, and a love for her cooking. So much so that Lozano said she put on weight, and began experiencing bullying for it, getting called “Puerca” (Pig). 

"She opened up about what was happening," Lozano's mother Yadhira said. "I told her, 'I’ll talk to the teacher, I’ll talk to the principal and we’ll have a meeting.' She said, 'Mom, let me solve this by myself.' And it’s not good when a 10-year-old says that. But she was, like, 'Give me some time, I’ll solve it.'

Lozano said the bullying began getting physical and she didn't know how best to defend herself.

"They would just trip me, start kicking me, and, you know, I start fighting," she said. "And I never knew how to fight. I never believed in violence. I didn't like violence, I didn't like to hit people."

She turned to her grandmother and received advice that would put her on a path to the boxing ring. "Sweetheart," her grandmother said, "if someone ever hits you, you hit them back. Don’t allow it!"

Lozano told her mother she wanted to join a boxing gym. There she found her passion. 

"I loved the fact that even shadow boxing, even knowing the basic things without actually hitting a person, but just knowing like, OK, this is the correct way, gave me so much confidence as a kid to know like, damn, like I know how to fight."

The bullying stopped. 

Lozano was soon asked to join her gym's competition team and began to box on the local and national stage. She went on to win the National Junior Olympics in 2015 and 2016 and the National Golden Gloves championship in 2018 and 2019.

The woman who's words helped put her in the ring would occasionally be in attendance cheering on her grandaughter.   

"She believed in me when I was a kid. More than anybody. More than anybody when I was growing up," Lozano said. "Whenever she would go to my fights the very small amount of times that she did go she'd be cheering like crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy."

Two weeks before she was set to face an opponent in her hometown of Laredo for the first time in 2019, Lozano and her family were unable to get in touch with her grandmother amid violence in the area that left multiple people dead after a shootout between a drug cartel and federal police.

"She stopped answering the phone. No call, no texts, no replies, no activity in her socials, nothing," Lozano said.

Lozano and her mother went to the house to find the doors locked. Lozano forced her way inside and found her grandmother on the floor, having died of what an autopsy later revealed to be a heart attack. 

"That's when I just started screaming," she said. 

Yadhira said the family thinks her mother's death was related to the impact of the local shooting. 

"She got scared and didn't want to tell us," she said. "Unfortunately, that day we lost our angel, our best friend, and Jenny was the one who suffered the most."

But, still, Lozano refused to postpone her fight. 

"I promised my grandma I was going to fight," she said. "She said she was going to be there."

Her grandmother's presence was felt at the fight, and Lozano let out a celebratory scream when she won. 

"I screamed at the top of my lungs and everybody is like, relax, relax," Lazano said. "And I just screamed because I felt a slight presence of her that night."

The victory came and went, but the grief remained, and she began expressing it through anger and rebellion. 

"I lost my track," she said. "I was going down the wrong path horribly with the wrong people, and I was just doing dumb stuff because I was so blind and just because I wanted to get distracted." 

She regained her focus after she got back in the ring and lost a match, realizing how far she strayed from the path her grandmother had set her down.

She got back on track, winning the USA Boxing Elite National Championships in 2020, 2021 and 2022 and taking second place at the 2023 Santiago Pan American Games to qualify for the 2024 Olympics.

She'll attempt to honor her grandmother at the Games by stepping into the ring and leaving with a medal. So, yes, here comes trouble. 

"I wish my grandma was here to see this," she said.

Lozano was interviewed for My New Favorite Olympian, a series that tells the stories of Team USA’s most inspiring athletes and the causes they champion. Subscribe to My New Favorite Olympian wherever you get your podcasts.