Perfect as a professional and on the verge of taking a step up as 2023 draws to a close, welterweight Avious Griffin was scheduled to make his broadcast debut on November 4 in Costa Rica against Nolberto Casco before the injury bug bit, but even before that, the idea of the world getting to see him for the first time wasn’t at the forefront of his mind. (photo by Austyn Moreno)
“No, it really ain’t hit me like that yet,” he said during an October 17 interview. “I try not to get caught up in the platforms and the big names – to me, it’s just another opponent, it’s just another fight, it’s just another step closer to the goal. Some people put too much pressure on themselves; they get caught up with ‘I’m fighting on DAZN, I’m fighting on a Golden Boy show.’ Don’t get it wrong; I’m thankful to fight on their platform to display my God-given talent. I wouldn’t have it no other way, but in order for me to remain at ease, I got to keep the mindset that it’s just another fight.”
It is, and it isn’t. Though Griffin, 13-0 with 12 KOs, would have been the favorite against the 7-1-1 (5 KOs) Nicaragua native, winning wasn’t going to be enough, even at this early stage of his career. Maybe he scores a one-punch knockout and gets signed by the promoter of the event, Golden Boy Promotions. If he doesn’t, maybe someone else sees him and brings him on board, making the next chapter an easier and more lucrative one to write. So yeah, it was just another fight, but not really. And if Griffin was letting all that get in his head, he wasn’t letting anyone know, because if he’s learned anything in his 29 years, it’s that patience is indeed a virtue.
“In reality, things in life have taught me to be patient,” said Griffin. “Don’t get it twisted – don’t think I ain’t sitting back with no hit list. Anybody ranked above me, they’re all on the hit list, but you know the levels and the steps and this process. So we’re going to enjoy the step that we’re in right now and we’re going to go handle our business and do what we do.”
Griffin laughs when talking about the hit list, and he does have a personality that screams being someone who is loving life, and why not? Especially when this conversation might not be happening at all due to his incarceration for a 2017 murder he didn’t commit in his native Tennessee. Of course, trying to prove that he wasn’t one of the four responsible wasn’t going to be easy, and it took him 11 months to do so.
“Man, I ain’t gonna lie. It was up and down the whole time,” he said. “When I first went there, I was like, man, I ain’t going to be in here long. I ain’t did nothing. They’re going to get me up out of here. But that was the first lesson.”
The lesson? Don’t trust the wrong people.
“It took me a long time, but this is the only positive conclusion that I took out of that negative situation,” he explains. “At that point in time, I was too loyal to everybody around me. I was green and being too loyal to people. I didn’t know that people could take advantage of your loyalty at that time. I trusted everybody around me. I thought everybody loved me. So, when I went to jail and everybody started taking their time to get me out of jail, now y’all showing me your true colors now. My little boy, two years old, nobody brought no pampers over there. A phone card cost $10 and nobody brought me a $10 phone card. Christmas come up, I’m calling home. Everybody going crazy in the club, but I’m in jail for something I ain’t did.”
Griffin was 4-0 as a pro at the time, but boxing was the last thing on his mind until October of 2020, when the charges against him were dismissed. He was a free man, alive again, and about to roll the dice once more on his boxing career – this time by going out to Las Vegas.
“I said, I’m going to go to Vegas, and I’m going to go spar, and if I can keep up with those guys, then I’m going to stay,” Griffin said. “So I came out here, I knocked somebody out my first sparring session and I said, we here to stay.”
That was a year-and-a-half ago, and while the work is always good at the Mayweather Boxing Club with coach Cromwell “Bullet” Gordon, what may be the most important part of this story is that Griffin’s entire life is in order, not just his boxing life. That wasn’t an easy process.
“I kind of gave up on myself,” he admits. “That’s why I tell everybody that I had to rebuild myself in there. They knocked me down to my lowest and didn’t care how they made me look. They didn’t care to clear my name once I beat the charge or none of that. So I had all of that weighing in on me.”
Not to mention that his mother had to put up her house, his son was without a father, and that his biggest fan – his father – had passed away just before his pro debut and wasn’t there to help navigate the rough waters Griffin was drowning in. But the fighter who calls himself “Tha Underdog” found his way, got mom the deed to her house back and bought her some land, and his son found the smile on his face again. As for Griffin’s father, Alvin, and what he would have thought about his little boy becoming a man, making it out the other side of a bad situation and becoming a legit prospect in the sport they both loved?
“When I was little, I was just riding around in the car with him,” Griffin said. “We used to go everywhere, and he’d tell all his friends, ‘My son’s going to be big.’ And this when I was just winning amateur tournaments and stuff like that. And then I remember when I turned pro in 2016, he just was happy as hell. And unfortunately, he died two, three weeks prior to my debut, but ever since I took that step to go do that, I just felt like me doing this, it’s making him happy and it’s making my mama happy. She called me yesterday and told me she was proud of me. And that’s really what it’s about to me – making my parents happy, seeing a smile on my son’s face, and trying to set a good example.”