Professionally speaking, Jonny Mansour didn't have to fight. Less than two months earlier, the lightweight prospect had headlined an Overtime Boxing event on DAZN in his hometown of San Diego, California, scoring a first-round knockout win over Markus Bowes. As busy as prospects want to be, it wasn't necessary for him to come back in seven weeks. Especially not with what was going on in his life.

Mansour's mother Bushra was battling Stage 4 cancer, a diagnosis he first learned about in the final stages of his amateur career, but the affliction had intensified and the prognosis had become more grim. In recent training camps, Mansour was spending as many hours in the hospital with her as he was in the gym, generally, five hours apiece. No one — not the industry at large, not his promoters at OTX — would have blamed him for pressing pause on his career for any amount of time, let alone when moments with his mother seemed especially precious.

Not everyone knew what Mansour was dealing with. Outwardly, Mansour appeared to be living a dream life for a boxing prospect. For his most recent bout against Bowes, he arrived in a gold Bugatti, a moment shared with his almost 270,000 Instagram followers, just squares away on the page from posts of him training alongside Manny Pacquiao or throwing a bag of cash in the air after securing a knockout bonus from his promoter.

To anyone that spoke to him, Mansour was a perfectly polished, university-educated, joyous young man with a magnetic charisma. Given all of that, offers flooded in from promoters to have Mansour added to their shows, especially after he nearly single-handedly sold out the Sycuan Casino ballroom in his fourth professional fight, compelling Overtime to slot him, a novice prospect, in the main event against the sport's convention.

Mansour turned those offers down, but one came in that made him feel differently. The Championing Mental Health event at the Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles aired on DAZN. The night was a charity fundraiser for mental health support for fighters in conjunction with Athletes For Hope, and every fighter on the show received one year of free therapy sessions. If there was ever an event where he could be comfortable sharing what was really going on in his life in the lead-up to a fight, a reality he was struggling to bottle up, it would be this one.

Mansour, 24, signed up to face Christian Avalos in the main event of the show, which meant opting into not only a fight, but the accoutrements of headlining, the interviews, the photo ops, the video shoots. After weighing in, he made the rounds, flashing his made-for-TV smile and saying all the right things. But when the camera lights turned off, there was a sadness in Mansour's eyes that had never been apparent before. As he took the elevator down to the Kimpton Everly Hotel lobby, he and his father shared a solemn cheers with cups of water, the tentative clink of the glass you share when the moment is regrettable but the contents of the cup are needed.

As he sat down on the lobby ottoman, for a brief moment, he was able to just be Jonny, Bushka's son, not Jonny the social media dynamo.

"Just because I'm smiling, just because I'm here in Los Angeles on a beautiful sunny day, that doesn't mean I'm happy. But what makes me happy is making her happy, making the people that I love happy, and bringing inspiration to the youth because all it takes is for a little spark to spark each talent and each individual, even at a young age," said Mansour. "So, for me, coming up when I was 14, 15 years old, I needed a role model to be there for me and to tell me things and to believe in me so if I could be that role model that I once needed now for anyone that has dreams and wants to accomplish anything in life, why not?

"I believe my purpose is to bring awareness and inspire those that need it. So this is a time that I'm going through in my life, which is a very tough time due to the circumstances of my mom's well-being, but her strength has made me even stronger. Our belief and our faith in God to continue to keep fighting until the last second of our lives is what inspires me to keep pushing forward. So I'm doing this for my mom and I'm doing this to make her happy."

Before long, Mansour had to return to the rooftop of the hotel for a YouTube live stream, and had to turn "it" on a little more once again. He was open and honest and transparent about his mental health battles, but he resisted the tears that had been flowing for months and months in the proximity of his opponent who was nearby doing interviews of his own.

On fight night, Mansour eschewed the pomp and circumstance that colored his previous fights. There was no Bugatti, no magician performing tricks behind him, no duffel bags of hundred dollar bills. Mansour was resplendent as always in gold Adams shoes and a perfectly tailored kit, but this time it simply read: My Mom Is My Hero.

"For me as a son, I want to continue to bring light home. I want to continue to bring happiness home. So, if I got to put a smile on my face and go to work, that's what I'm going to do," said Mansour.

If crowd noise was any indication, a good amount of the attendees at the Avalon were Mansour fans. He was not required to sell tickets, nor was anyone on the card, an initiative insisted upon by Championing Mental Health founder Anthony Girges to lessen the mental burden on fighters, but Mansour's supporters came out on their own without prompt. For Mansour, however, there was just one spectator — his Mom.

Generally speaking, fights at this level are only deemed a success by the viewing public if the prospect being developed scores a knockout. Obviously, that's a reductive approach to evaluating developmental fights, but for even the most unforgiving observer, the victory for Mansour on this night was simply being in the ring at all. And in front of an audience of thousands but truly an audience of one, he impressively boxed his way around Avalos, tapping into his exceptional amateur schooling that saw him reach top status in the United States in his weight class before turning pro.

Mansour's victory was a unanimous one, a shutout on all three scorecards, but his triumph came in the fourth round. At some point in the round, he found joy in the fight, and began dancing, tapping his gloves to his feet, moving to the rhythm in his heart. The song, one of love for his mother.

As Mansour's hand was raised and he was asked post-fight questions by in-ring interviewer The Schmo, Mansour finally succumbed to the tears in public as he began to speak.

"I love you Mom, and I just want to say you're my hero," he said.

Two days later, Bushra Younes Blue passed away in a San Diego hospital. One of the final things she would have seen was her son in the ring, captivated by the joy of the sport they dedicated their lives to as a family together. As the broadcast went off the air, he held a ceremonial WBC green belt commemorating mental health support.

In some ways, a prelude to the world title belt they'd dreamt of, but in others, the most important one he'd ever hold, a token of the hardest fight he'll ever face.

Just as he'd promised, Mansour kept fighting until the last second of his Mom's life, just like she did.