Steven Navarro isn’t like most 20-year olds. Of course, there’s the obvious fact that most people his age are not highly touted professional boxing prospects, but even if you didn’t know Navarro likely come away from a conversation with him thinking “that’s an old soul.”

Navarro is done a hard morning of training, one that begins with a six to seven mile run at 5:00 AM on the dot, “or else it doesn’t count,” in the words of his father and trainer Refugio. To wind down, he likes to listen to jazz, a passion he discovered during a trip to New York City where he was formally introduced to the works of Frank Sinatra. Nearby are a stack of books and a new coffee maker, as he delves into his new passion of brewing his own java every day, something that both piques his curiosity and “saves him $13 a day” and a trip to the local café.

“I think that’s my mother’s fault for introducing me to the movie The Notebook at a very young age. I think that was the year I was supposed to be born,” joked Navarro, referring to the 1940s, the era in which the movie was set.

Inside the ring, there’s also a decidedly old school feel about Navarro, who has started to gain acclaim as one of boxing’s top young prospects, and perhaps the best in the Top Rank stable since his longtime friend and former amateur teammate Abdullah Mason’s unofficial graduation into contention. Navarro’s boxing knowledge has been inherited from a long line of fighters that extends beyond just his father. His uncle Jose was a four-time world title challenger and 2000 Olympian. His other uncle Carlos was an outstanding amateur, once rated No. 1 in the United States at featherweight for three consecutive years—a period that included a win over Floyd Mayweather Jr.—before enjoying a solid pro career himself. His cousins Jonathan, David and Chantel are professional fighters as well.

In part because of the promotional heft of Top Rank and its broadcast partner ESPN, Steven has enjoyed more attention in his first year as a professional than his more experienced pro cousins Jonathan and David. There’s also the reality that young fighters are often judged in relation to their proximity to a world title, and although Steven is just 5-0, at super flyweight, with his amateur pedigree (13 US national amateur titles), prospects become contenders much quicker than they do at higher weights where his cousins reside.

But it’s also because he jumps off the screen. Navarro dazzled in his year-ending victory over the 7-1 Gabriel Bernardi on the Navarrete-Valdez II undercard in December, scoring a second-round TKO victory—his fourth stoppage win in his first five fights. The Los Angeles native flowed between orthodox and southpaw, spinning his opponent perpetually as he landed hooks and uppercuts from oscillating stances until the punishment and the circumstances were just too much.

ESPN commentator Timothy Bradley noted that he was “getting Bam vibes,” drawing comparisons to RING Magazine’s Pound-For Pound No. 6 Bam Rodriguez. But Navarro’s reference points—other than the cinematic ones—tend to come from many decades prior to Bam’s reign.

These days, Navarro has been studying some of the stylistic masters of yesteryear, Sugar Ray Robinson, Sugar Ray Leonard and Ricardo Lopez. Like Robinson, he now likes to train to the sounds of jazz.

“People were shadowboxing to other types of music and it was like it was like watching Step Up 2 where your body just reacts to it you know? I was starting to move to the music and it's like a flow, it's very it's very slight and beautiful flow and that's what i was thinking of how i could fight with that. It's crazy the way the mind and body work,” said Navarro.

On this morning, Navarro was working with his uncle Jose on a number of granular technical aspects of his game. He felt he was picking his feet up a little too much when he was moving, rather than dragging his feet and gliding so he could remain in constant punching position. Navarro pointed out that this tiny quirk has been the downfall of many fighters, particularly pressure fighters, who have to reset in order to throw their shots.

"He's just, you know, expanding my mind on some new things and just sharpening things up. He's actually one of the first people who actually helped me switch. You know, I'm a switch hitter. I originally am an orthodox fighter, but there were certain habits, bad habits that I had fighting as an orthodox fighter. So, my way of thinking was, if I could rebuild a style without those habits, learn how to walk again without those habits, it would be perfect,” said Navarro, before expanding on the habits he wanted to stamp out. “The lifting of the shoulders, the flaring of the elbows, that was another thing dropping my hands. So those were habits I was struggling with in the beginning. And yeah, I wanted to get rid of them. I completely erased them. So, I was really learning how to walk as a southpaw fighter. I was implementing the correct things that I felt like I wasn't doing right-handed. As I was doing that, I was also learning how to mirror the right things that I liked as a right hander. So, it was like creating a new me, but with all the cons out of the picture.”

This stylistic adaptation is in many ways a distillation of the greater journey Navarro is on. The creation of a new man without the bad habits. The gathering of information to create the ultimate final form of not just himself, but of a fighting Navarro. He’s had both the curse and the blessing of learning from the errors and the successes of those who came before him, and now, the burden of being the one to break through and win a world title.

Although Uncle Jose may be tightening some things up with him, it’s of course his father Refugio who taught him the sport and continues to teach him the bulk of what he knows. Refugio didn’t initially want his son to box, but changed his mind after an early sparring session against a more experienced kid in the gym. Steven has said that his Dad “went from beating the streets to taking (him) around the world.” Apart from boxing being a fruitful vocation to pass down to his son, it became something much larger for the Navarros.

There was a time when the only time Steven saw his father sober was at the boxing gym. Refugio was in the grips of drug addiction, and had spent time in prison. But the gym became a place of salvation for both of them, and a place of redemption for Refugio, who has become one of the most respected minds in California boxing, and has indeed taken his son around the world.

"That's my best friend. He's always been my biggest role model after the man above," said Navarro. "it's very humbling that you can have somebody like that. You know, the world could kick you in the butt but it's a matter of how many times you get up and continue moving forward. Having that person in your corner, is just, it's a surreal blessing, because he's so strong he's so strong, he's so strong. I always tell the man above I'd be more than blessed just to have a percentage of that."

Steven has evaded those same trappings, but the lessons he’s learned from his father’s struggles and subsequent triumph have permeated his life. Over the Christmas holiday, for example, Navarro not only continued training but abstained from any kind of indulgent eating. It may sound like a small thing, or even a given for an athlete tasked with regularly weighing 115 pounds, but the symbolism is much greater for Navarro. Every step he takes in his journey is seemingly an ode to the struggles of the family members who paved the way before him. His frugality, the hesitance to spend $13 on coffee a day? Well, his uncles can tell him what it was like living in a two-bedroom house with 11 siblings, cashing in recycled cans to scrounge up money to fly to the Olympics.

“When you're living or chasing a prolific way of living, it's a blessing, it's a curse. You know, there's a lot of food, there's a lot of temptations around you. But like I said, when you're trying to follow a prolific lifestyle, there's choices you need to make,” said Navarro. “It was good to have my family see me make the sacrifices.”

Navarro also likes to forge a deeper connection with his familial roots through one of his other old timey hobbies: Horseback riding. He says that being in the dirt grounds him in memories of his homeland, la tierra. It’s a time when he can be alone with his thoughts, but also an exercise of trust. I like to be humbled a lot. I do,” said Navarro of his time riding. “I've always reminded myself that things that could be worse or they could be better. Enjoying the time with the horse, it's that, it's such an amazing being.”

As Navarro begins his 2025 campaign, he likely finds himself on the shortlist of prospects whom writers and analysts have on the pre-season shortlist, to borrow a college football mechanism, for Prospect Of The Year, a list that grows as new hopefuls emerge and gets wittled down as some suffer setbacks. As happy as he is for the aforementioned Mason, he doesn’t give much thought to short-term goals such as matching Mason’s accolades. Like all fighters, his goals are much grander, but his motivations are much deeper.

When he starts to talk about his thoughts inside the ring, it’s as if the coffee mug slams down on the counter and the needle on the jazz record scratches. Suddenly, the thread between his old soul and the one that burns with competitive desire becomes clear. Navarro simply feels that his “why” is a deeper reserve of fuel than any of his opponents have access to.

"My mindset is that when you enter the ring with me, I'm going to make you question why you're doing this. And that's the way I think entering the sport. I'm going to have so many tools and IQ behind it, where I'm going to show you're so many levels below me, is going to make you question why you're doing this," said Navarro. "That's what I look for every day, every day, because that's the question I ask myself. But when you enter the ring with me, you're going to hear that voice very, very loud. It's going to be somebody yelling in your ear."