Tears streamed down his mother’s cheeks, hitting the floor of a dark New York basement as she pleaded with him. 

“Let’s go back,” she said. “You have a good life at home. You don’t have to do this.”

He was scared, too.

The basement he’d found for rent was cramped and windowless, discovered after a full day of wandering New York in search of somewhere — anywhere — to live. 

Just hours into Diego Rhon’s first day living in the United States, the 20-year-old from Quito, Ecuador, was already questioning everything.

He traveled to America with the promise of a job and a place to stay from a taekwondo coach he’d met back home. Instead, he was greeted by the opposite of the American dream: a scam.

The job, as it turned out, would pay $10 an hour for five hours a day. The promised place to stay didn’t exist.

When his mother begged him to return home with her, Rhon contemplated his choices and said three words that would eventually carry him from a stuffy New York basement to a fighting cage in Colorado to a professional mixed martial arts debut set for Friday in Westminster. 

“Let me try,” he said.

From New York to California to the shadow of Pikes Peak, the Ecuadorian’s journey was fueled by a dream that followed him across continents. 

“I came here to fight,” said Rhon, 26. “In my mind, I was literally thinking ‘You’re just going to go, find a job and train.’ But when I got there, I found another reality. I was surviving instead of actually living.” 

With his mother back on a plane to Ecuador and nowhere else to turn, Rhon wandered the Big Apple until he spotted a building that reminded him of home: a taekwondo studio.

“Now, my English is maybe an eight out of 10, but at the time, it was like a three or a four,” he said. “We couldn’t communicate very much, but when I asked if they were hiring, the owner brought me to a punching bag and had me show him different kicks. He hired me just like that.” 

His time in New York was short-lived. After a month, Rhon traded a concrete skyline for the sunshine of Long Beach, Calif. And for the next two years, he rented the couch in a Mexican family’s living room and used a scooter for his daily 90-minute gym commute, training for the sport he initially learned to love over 3,000 miles away.

Taking taekwondo classes since 2014 when he was 14, Rhon became a black belt in less than three years as a teenager, earning multiple awards at Ecuador’s national level.

But it wasn’t until 2020 when he explored mixed martial arts and won his first amateur match in his home country, two years before moving to the U.S. on a visa. He is now considered a permanent resident and is awaiting the date to take his citizenship test.

In February 2023, Rhon won his first American fight by first-round knockout in California. And shortly after, he accepted a friend’s invitation for a more affordable life beneath the Rocky Mountains in Colorado Springs. 

His daily schedule: Train, work, lift weights, train again, repeat. 

His third amateur fight came with an offer to return to California for the weekend.

“I trained for months by myself and lost a lot of weight,” Rhon said. “One day prior to the fight, the promoter called me and told me my opponent had pulled out. He said he found another guy for me, but he was in a different weight class. I had prepared for 160, and he was like 170. I knew I probably shouldn’t say yes, but I had a lot of confidence and I went for it anyway.” 

He lost. 

And while the loss bruised both his body and his ego, Rhon said, the aftermath was the most painful part. Almost as quickly as the treatment of a knockout winner had appeared, it vanished. 

“There was a realization that when you’re winning everyone likes you,” he said. “But when you lose, it’s just the people that care about you that are left. The way that I see it now, fighting isn’t about the winning part. It’s about the person I have to become. It’s the guy that has to wake up every day to go train, even if he’s tired, has to work, be a general manager somewhere or have his own business. It’s that fight with myself. Now, I look back proud at myself because I’m winning that daily fight.”

For the next two years, Rhon’s biggest battles weren’t scheduled on a poster anymore.

By day, he built a career. By night, he trained at local gyms like OCC Fight House, Unbreakable Ministries and 10th Planet Colorado Springs for another match he wasn’t sure would ever come.

Rhon was like so many people who make up the Colorado Springs community, a transplant without Colorado roots. Sometimes, they arrive with a little more than an accent, a suitcase and a dream.

Today, Rhon serves as the general manager of South Academy Boulevard’s Crunch Fitness. In August 2025, he added another title to his resume: licensed real estate agent.

In less than a year, Rhon has sold 10 homes, many to members of Colorado Springs’ Hispanic community.

“When people hear my story, they realize they can trust me,” he said. “I’ve proved to my clients that I fight in every aspect of life, and I’ll fight for them too. Real estate or being the manager might come with money, but I’m hungry for more than to win a fight or for money. Fighting is more about my legacy, and it’s a part of who I am. I’ve been fighting from the first day I came here to when I slept on a couch for two years. I’ve been fighting all this time.” 

Rhon put his gloves back on in June 2025, winning by knockout in the second round after a two-year hiatus. Four months later, he took down another opponent in his fifth amateur fight.

Now, Rhon will jump into his first professional MMA-style fight Friday, with battles like these being considered pro-fighting when the fighters themselves decide to make the switch from an amateur title, he said. 

Colorado Combat Club 32 will host his professional debut for $55 per ticket at the Rodeo Convention Center, 8991 N. Harlan St., in Westminster at 6 p.m. Friday. 

“I feel free right now,” he said. “It’s weird because this is probably the fight that I feel the most confident in. I can’t control the outcome, but I’ve been getting ready for this moment and training since I was 14 or 15 years old. It’s my biggest fight so far.” 

Yet in many ways, despite competing against another trained fighter, some might say the most courageous thing Rhon ever did isn’t step into an MMA cage. 

It was stepping onto a plane with a one-way ticket, not knowing the life that would await him once he landed.