When he was 4, his parents separated and his mother moved his family to New Mexico. Two years later, his single mom moved the family to Phoenix.
With only one couch in his living room, and at least one or two siblings in his bed until he was 17, there wasn't much.
"So we took off the couch cushions and used them to fight," said Alonzo, Cejudo's brother. "We were like 'American Gladiators.' "
Soon the fighting moved to the gym, where Cejudo and his older brother Angel became high school stars.
When Angel moved to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., Henry followed, even though he was just a high school junior at the time. It immediately provided him the one thing he thought he had been missing.
"I finally had my own bed," he said. "But I was lonely in it."
His father died of heart failure in Mexico City after a long battle with drugs, and Henry couldn't make it to the funeral. He won championships while still in high school, but matured slowly after that, and there were times it seemed he would fail his potential.
"He could be in prison, he could be a drug dealer, he could be a lot of things," said his coach, Terry Brands.
But an Olympic champion?
"Nobody believed but us," Angel said.
He was knocked out of the first round of last year's world championships, weeping in defeat.
He needed a late comeback to win the Olympic trials. He needed to drop 10 pounds just to make weight Tuesday.
Then, once his long wrestling day began, he needed to come back to win all three of his preliminary matches.
By the time he reached the finals, he was a little tired, a little sad, but plenty inspired.
His mother, Nelly Rico, was not in the Beijing Agricultural University Gymnasium stands, because she does not have a passport.
"If you ask my mom, she will tell you she is American," he said, later adding, "This gold medal is hers."
A collection of family and friends did show up, and with such vigor, they were nearly ejected. During his match, the Cejudo clan refused to sit down despite repeated admonitions from frustrated security people.
"We didn't want to get thrown out but, if your little bro is down there, what are you going to do?" Alonzo said. "After a while, [the guard] just got tired of it."
Down on the mat, Cejudo was tired of messing around. He immediately attacked Matsunaga's legs and pushed him around the mat, scoring enough to win each of the first two rounds in the best-of-three format, giving him the victory.
After which, Cejudo immediately began crying and looking for that flag, taking it back to the mat for what will become not only the signature celebration of his career, but perhaps of these entire Olympics.
"The United States is the kind of place where you can choose your own path," he said. "We should never forget that."
Henry Cejudo's path -- slippery and scrabbled and wonderfully star-spangled -- perhaps ensures that we won't.
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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.
