As a devout Muslim, lightweight contender Kurt Scoby had a difficult decision to make when it came to his March 22 bout against Cesar Villarraga, one that he agonized over for several days. With the proposed bout being in the middle of Ramadan, Scoby didn’t know whether to not fight at all, to attempt to train and cut weight during while fasting, or to train and eat as normal and make up for his missed days. After speaking with his Imam, he was at comfort with the latter option.

Seeking guidance and making up for his days are throughlines in Scoby’s story over the last twelve months. It’s almost exactly one year since he suffered his first professional loss to Dakota Linger, a 16/1 underdog who stopped him six rounds. At that point, Scoby was one of American boxing’s most hyped prospects, enjoying a steady wave of social media exposure thanks to his promoter Overtime, which has built a brand in both basketball and football alike doing just that for up-and-coming athletes.

“One thing I did do is when I took that loss, not many people knew, I went right back to the locker room and I put my rug down. I went right to my prayer. I said, whatever you're trying to teach me, you taught me. You taught me. And I thank you for that,” said Scoby.

It was the specifics of what he needed to learn that Scoby now needed to figure out. A day after the fight, he drove to Washington D.C. with his fiancée and his son on a soul-searching trip. Once he got to Washington, he was connected with trainer Hector Bermudez. The two were supposed to talk anyway about upcoming sparring sessions at Bermudez’s gym, but now Scoby wasn’t just looking to be hired help, he needed help himself, looking to move away from his longtime coaches Don Saxby and Leon Taylor.

Bermudez picked up the phone and heard the voice of the man whose loss had cost him a 20-fight parlay on a bet he’d placed two nights before. In the Linger fight, Bermudez was still impressed with Scoby, but felt he needed to learn some “basic survival skills,” noting that Scoby didn’t have any mechanisms to work through being buzzed by Linger, which started the avalanche that led to the stoppage. As a former collegiate football player, Scoby came to the sport late and was able to rely mainly on ruthless aggression and immense athleticism. Those skills, Bermudez identified, had taken him about as far as they could, but with a few fundamental tweaks, Scoby could indeed live up to the hype after all.

He sent Scoby his gym’s location in Springfield, MA, along with a video of it in case there were any difficulties finding it, and the partnership began. Scoby packed his car, drove his wife and child back home to New York, and continued on to Springfield, a place he previously couldn’t point out on a map.

Although the surroundings were new, there was at first a chilling familiarity with them. Bermudez’s gym is a converted firehouse, with multiple fighters and sometimes Bermudez himself staying at the gym at once. For a man who had been in 14 different foster homes started at the age of 12, the scene was instantly triggering.

“When I first got there, it felt like the foster homes. When I got there, I had my suitcase, and every foster care place you go, you have to bring your suitcase, and you're given a room. So for me, I instantly broke down,” said Scoby, who called Bermudez to tell him how he was feeling. “I was like, wow, this feels like I was a little kid. I didn't unpack. That's one thing about being in a foster home. Every child that goes in your home, you notice that they don't unpack for a week or two, because you might be leaving. They might get sent off. You might be leaving. So, I was chilling. I was like, man, I kind of wanted, I wanted to tear up. I didn't know. I'm laying on the bed. I'm like, damn.”

However, Scoby found himself amongst other high-level pros like former world champion TJ Doheny who were willing to embrace him. More crucially however, he found a teacher in Bermudez who was able to ease his insecurities when it came to a sport he was still comparatively new to. No query was too basic, because Bermudez’s methods are rooted in obsessively drilling the basics. On more than one occasion, for example, Scoby has spent multiple hours with his gym mates simply partnering up and parrying a jab. Forty round fundamental sessions are commonplace, in fact, they’re the baseline of what Scoby now expects.

This allowed Scoby to rid himself of the bad instincts he carried over from football—carrying pent-up aggression into the ring—and tap into the good ones—a fanaticism for tape study and honing in on minute details.

“I came into a platform over time where they do a really good job of pumping you up. And sometimes it was the same when I was happening in football, where everybody's pumping you up, and so you let that get to your head,” said Scoby. “But the thing is, what I do now is, nah, I don't serve the audience. I serve my peace and my family's peace. So that's the way I look at boxing. I show humility when I step inside the ring. And I was taught right away from my coach. I know I keep reflecting back to coach, but the truth is undisputed.”

Scoby’s “big reveal,” if you will, came on Saturday night against Villarraga, his first fight with a new line of thinking, a new method of learning. In recent months, he says he’s been contacted by both Oscar Duarte and Lucas Bahdi’s backers to step in on short notice, signifying that the boxing industry at large no longer thinks of him as the frightening power punching prospect he was being touted as in 2023 and early 2024. In those days, matchmakers wouldn’t have thought he’d be available for such situations, for one, but also probably wouldn’t have been certain that he wasn’t too dangerous even if he was.

This isn’t a dynamic Scoby ruminates on though. That would necessitate dwelling on the past and living in a hubris he is now learning to reject both inside the ring and out.

“Well, the Muslim religion, there's no ceiling to it. You can't be above anybody. So, you're always growing. So that's what I take from the religion on top. And I know that there's always going to be growth. There's always going to be a process. But you have to understand the lessons that you're asking for. So I'm praying for, I'm praying for difficulties and I'm praying for patience, but then when (difficult) things come to you, I'm like, dang, why is it coming to me? I just prayed on it. No, no, no. Accept it. Understand it. Take a deep breath and grow from it. So that's what I do. A lot of people ask for things and don't know how to deal with them when they come,” said Scoby. “The firehouse builds boys into men. That's what it really does.”