Garrett Rice is looking to walk in the path laid by boxers he grew up with.

The junior lightweight prospect returns for his second fight of the year on Thursday night at Coliseo Pedrin Zorrilla in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Rice, 2-0 (1 KO), had close to 200 amateur fights, and he was always surrounded by his famous older peers. Rice started boxing at 6 years old. Among those in the gym were Claressa Shields, Anthony and Andre Dirrell, Sardius Simmons, Ardreal Holmes Jnr and Leon Lawson III.

“I was always the youngest in the gym, and I was always the smallest,” Rice, now 24 years old, told BoxingScene. 

At 10 or 11 years old, Rice realized he was in a unique gym at the right time. He was surrounded by Shields, the most accomplished women’s boxer ever, and by various future titleholders and challengers who were grinding in the gym daily around him. 

“I saw Anthony Dirrell’s highlights and knew he was close to being a world champion, and then I saw Claressa win gold at the Olympics, I knew where I was at,” Rice said. “Then the rest of the team started traveling around the world [for amateur boxing bouts].”

He credits his father, Garrett Rice Snr, with keeping him in boxing during a tough period when he had no peers his age and was sparring with the older kids. All of those days paid off when he won his first national title as an amateur. 

“When I won my first national title, I also won the most outstanding boxer of the tournament at the Junior Olympic nationals,” Rice added. “The whole team threw a party for me after that. They had bounce houses outside.”

Rice has lofty goals for this year and wants to start boxing eight-rounders. Having fought on February 10, he had hoped to return less than two weeks later on the Claressa Shields vs. Franchon Crews-Dezurn II undercard, but an illness saw his appearance postponed. 

“I want to get a lot of experience,” Rice said. “I don’t want to say I turned pro late. I want to say it was perfect timing, but I don’t want to be behind.”

Rice’s next achievement is being a master of social media. He has been going viral with sparring clips that are getting hundreds of thousands of views despite his relative obscurity among mainstream boxing fans. Rice’s most recent clip of him sparring has 500,000 views at the time of this writing.

“I want to say after 2022, I started to go viral,” Rice said. “It is actually wild [that so many people have watched it].”

When asked about why he connects with people, he offered: “I am different than everybody.  A lot of people can’t do what I do. A lot of people can’t make somebody miss, and make them pay.”