Cayden Griffiths was supposed to make his professional boxing debut this past Friday night in Corpus Christi, Texas.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that he got all his homework done for the week.

Welcome to the life of a 17-year-old prizefighter. But the Californian isn’t like most teenagers about to make their move from the amateurs to the pros. 

This one seems special. And you can point to an amateur background that includes a host of titles, the fact that he practically grew up under the tutelage of Antonio and Joel Diaz in their Indio gym, the sparring he gets with some scary folks every week, or the fact that he carries himself like someone ten years older to come to that conclusion. But after years of talking to an endless array of hot prospects, sometimes something just clicks. And Griffiths has that presence.

Not that he’s listening to any of the noise.

“I'm trying not to let it get to my head,” he said when asked about his pro debut, which will now take place on October 14 on the undercard of the Janibek Alimkhanuly-Vincenzo Gualtieri middleweight title unification fight in Rosenberg, Texas. “I'm trying to stay composed and be professional about it, but I am definitely excited. It's a big step for me and it's been a dream of mine for a long time, so I'm trying to just take it as slow as I can and process it.”

Griffiths isn’t used to taking things slow, not when you’re 17 and about to enter the hurt business. That’s a fast rise no matter how you slice it, but don’t mistake his youth for being naïve. He’s been at this since he was seven years old, and from the moment he stepped through the ropes, he knew this was likely going to be his path.

“The first day I walked into the gym, my coach had me get into the ring and go one round with a kid who had been training there, and if I was able to last the round, he said he'd train me,” Griffiths recalls. “And then I got in there and I did really well; I wound up making the kid cry on my first day with no real boxing experience whatsoever, just a simple 1-2 that my dad had taught me a few years before. But yeah, ever since then I just fell in love with it. I liked soccer at the time, but I just liked boxing so much more, so I just decided to stick to that and eventually moved to the Diaz training camp with Antonio and Joel and been there ever since.”

I can see the t-shirt now – “Cayden Griffiths, making opponents cry since the age of seven.”

But in all seriousness, to have that kind of clarity about an adult career at seven is pretty remarkable. And while he thought of branching out into other sports, he always returned to boxing, and with mom keeping him focused on school while dad kept his mind on boxing, it turned into a successful mix.

“Deep down, I knew that this is what I was really gifted at and this is what was really going to take me places,” he said. “So it kind of just kept me motivated to stick with it and not really give up on it.”

Local press latched on to him early, and as the wins and amateur titles piled up, the first logical step as he got older was to try and nab a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. But with him turning pro next month, it’s obvious that he let that dream go for the usual reasons many leave the amateurs behind, and one that is a little rarer than most.

“It was always a dream of mine growing up,” Griffiths said of going to the Olympics. “It was actually more of a dream than becoming a world champion. But over the years we had a lot of bad decisions given to us. And not only that, but my age actually screwed me over for 2024, I wouldn't be old enough to go, since I'm not going to be 18 by December. So it wouldn't have been possible for me to go, even if I did qualify, but I got screwed over at the qualifiers.”

In the pros, there are still politics, though not as much as in the amateur ranks, so making the call to get paid for this was a smart one, especially with Griffiths being as marketable a prospect as there is entering the game in 2023. How marketable? He’s currently at 25.4K followers on Instagram, a number that doesn’t impress him as much as it does me.

“I have a decent following on Instagram,” he said in the understatement of the year for a teenager in a “niche” sport who hasn’t had a pro fight yet. “I wouldn't say celebrity status, but for most kids my age, that's a decent amount of supporters and it's helped me to stay humble, and kept reminding me to stay humble. When kids start to get a little bit of attention, a lot of 'em get cocky. And that's what I'm trying to stay away from. Confidence is key, but there's a fine line between confidence and cockiness and I'm just really trying to stay true to my morals and be somebody that the fans can actually love and appreciate as opposed to someone who they just want to see lose.”

See, there’s something special about the kid, and while he will be written off immediately because he looks like he could be in a boy band on weekends he’s not fighting, the bottom line is that you don’t survive in the Diaz gym if you can’t fight. And if you get too big for your britches, a sparring session with Murodjon Akhmadaliev, Brandon Figueroa, Batyr Akhmedov or Brandun Lee will bring you down to Earth fast. And Griffiths has seen that happen.

“I've seen fighters go in there thinking that they're going to beat up world champions and that is not what happened,” he laughs. 

But, at this point, Griffiths hasn’t had to have any hard lessons taught to him. He relies on how he was raised and what he’s seen to prevent him from reading his own press clippings.

“I just remember where I started from,” he said. “I don't come from a broken home. I come from a good family and my mom and dad have always taught me stay humble and never get cocky. You always see fighters get a little bit of fame and they change their whole personality and then they wind up getting knocked out or something crazy happens and then it's karma. And it's tempting at times. You win a big tournament, you feel like you're on top of the world and you start to get a little bit more confident and then you get humbled. And that's just what I want to stay away from. I want to stay humble so that way I don't get humbled.”

For now, Griffiths can enjoy a half-week without homework and his first payday as a pro boxer next month. From there, hold on, because it looks like this is going to be some ride.