In a time when boxers with 4-0 records are screaming for title shots while the best fights in the sport are taking place on social media, the honesty of middleweight Quatavious Cash is refreshing.

At 29, he’s entering his physical prime, he’s got an impressive 12-2 record and has a growing fan base after appearing on the fifth season of The Contender. But as he heads into his first start of 2021 at the Buckhead Fight Club in his hometown of Atlanta this Saturday, Cash is staying level-headed in a sport where that is rarely celebrated.

“I don't see myself as being fully ready for a title shot or the next level, but I have improved so much since last year that I feel like if I get a good run this year, 2022 will be the year that I'm definitely stamping my name on something,” he said. “It's like I'm at the door, but I'm not in the door. I feel like I'm ready to take a step up and take a fight where people think I'm gonna lose, and I'm ready to fight more rounds.”

He’ll get six or less of them this weekend against Harry Keenan Cruz-Cubano, likely less, but a fight’s a fight and Cash will take any he can get after a 2020 campaign that might have been the best of his career if not for the COVID-19 pandemic. But that hit everybody in the sport in one way, shape or form, so while he did get in a technical decision win over Calvin Metcalf in the Top Rank bubble in Las Vegas in June, that was it.

“It's been a wild ride,” he said. “So I fought June 9th on ESPN and that was my mother's birthday. Then I got another fight offer for October 17, which is the anniversary of the day my mom died. My opponent caught COVID, so they couldn't find nobody in time, and that got canceled. But I was in shape and ready for that. Then I was supposed to fight on Canelo's undercard December 19th, but my coach caught COVID, so I had to pull out of that. I had an offer for Showtime February 17, and I had COVID. I had to pull out of camp with Caleb Plant this year because of that, so this is my first training camp back after beating COVID and I'm just testing my body out. It is a homecoming, and I feel strong right now and hopefully all the hard work I did after beating COVID will boost me into keeping the momentum going so I won't have to stop again and be on the shelf.”

Saturday’s bout will be his first in Georgia since 2017, and only his third at home since he moved to Las Vegas in 2014. In the months leading up to the move, Cash built an 8-0 pro record, was fresh from a solid amateur career and feeling bulletproof. Then he got shot in the leg while breaking up a fight in 2013 and he found out that he wasn’t.

“I turned pro in Atlanta and I'm lackadaisical, one foot in the gym, one foot in the streets, and I end up getting shot in 2013,” he recalled. “After that, my mom, before she passed, she told me that to make a real shot at being a world champion, you need to go where the world champions are and get around the right people.” 

That was Las Vegas, a place where most go to be immature for a weekend or more. Cash took the other route – he grew up.

“I had no car,” he said. “I just had an apartment, two suitcases and an air mattress with a hole in it and I made it work. I did camps with Ishe Smith and Badou Jack and I soaked up the game from them, I got paid and I was able to pay my bills and eat okay for a while until I was able to boost my living situation better and start a family. Those guys helped me a lot. They really matured me as a man and in the ring.”

Cash describes those days in the Mayweather Boxing Gym as “being in gladiator school,” and he took his lumps. He also had promotional issues back home that kept him sidelined from 2014 to 2017, but though he wasn’t able to fight, he was able to learn. And he got his PhD in the sweet science.

“I've sparred the best of the best, competed close with a few top guys, and I just soak up the game from them and I've learned that you can't rush this,” said Cash, who estimates that he’s worked with close to 20 world champions over the years. “No matter how talented people think I am, it's still a process and I can't skip a step. So I don't want to skip a step, I don't want to just look for the money. We're gonna take our time. I care more about my health, I care more about my family, and I do feel like I can be a champion one day, and it's gonna take some work, so I'm willing to do that work.”

Cash was still green when he fought on The Contender, where he lost bouts to Gerald Sherrell and Mark Anthony Hernandez in 2018, but he’s stayed in the gym and put together two wins since over Chukka Willis and Metcalf. Outside the ring, he’s a doting father to three-year-old Dallas, and one look at the young Mr. Cash’s smile while wearing his Woody outfit from Toy Story and you can tell that dad is doing a heck of a job with his son.

“I think I'm the coolest dad,” he laughs, and he might be right. More than cool, though, Cash wants to do for his son what his mother did for him. She was the catalyst for Cash leaving Atlanta for Vegas, and there was more to it than that.

“She stopped paying for her medicine to help me stay in Vegas and fulfill my dreams,” Cash said. “That's a demon I've been living with since she died in 2015.”

He says talking about mom in interviews and on The Contender was therapy for him, but he has no reason to carry that demon around. Sacrifice is part of the job for a good parent, and what Jan Cash did for her son is being carried on from Quatavious to Dallas.

“Since the first day I had my son, something just clicked in my head and I was already going in the right direction, but I said now I gotta kick it to the next gear,” he said. “Now I'm more cautious with everything. I feel like having my son made my boxing better. I used to want to be a tough guy so bad because Diego Corrales was my favorite fighter, so for a while I didn't care about getting hit. But now I care more about my health, I care more about my life after boxing because I have a son to take care of, and I want to work hard and accomplish all my goals so he can look up to me and see that his dad went through all the hard parts so he can have an easy life and do more than what I did. You don't have to come from struggle to be successful. I want to show him that I took my struggle and made a beautiful platform for him so he don't have to start from zero the way I did.”

The building of that platform continues in Atlanta, where it all began. Cash has had top-notch work in preparation for his fight as he’s been in the camp of Erislandy Lara, and when he heads to Georgia, he’ll have a huge contingent of family and friends waiting to support him. He says within the first couple days of tickets going on sale, he sold $5,000 worth, making it clear that he’s not dodging phone calls from those looking for freebies.

  

“They understand the grind,” he laughs. “With me coming from Atlanta, being in the streets, and I stayed on every side of town, so they understand the grind and the journey that I took, so everybody's supportive. They're buying t-shirts, they want signed gloves, and when it's fight time, everybody hits me up and asks me what I need to make sure I'm comfortable.”

It’s really not surprising, given Cash’s character, and he’s the kind of fighter you want to see do well. But it’s all up to him now, and he’s fine with that because he finally has the tools he didn’t have before to get the job done. Add in more motivation than ever to get to where he wants to go, and Quatavious Cash will be a very dangerous young man.

“I had to learn on the job,” he said. “But I feel more seasoned now going into the next phase of my career because I know what I'm dealing with now. And I want people to know that no matter what you come from, that doesn't have to define you. So I think it's very important for me to keep getting my story out there and to keep telling people about my mishaps and the turmoil that I've been through so it can help them. It's not just about me; it's about the next generation coming up.”