On June 28, Mexican-American country singer MŌRIAH and artist Ana Bárbara turned a room filled with apprehension into a powerful moment of unity, prior to a boxing matchup between American boxer Jake Paul and Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. in Anaheim, California.

“The tension in the room was palpable,” MŌRIAH recalls, as the matchup came amidst heightened political strife. MŌRIAH and Bárbara met in Bárbara’s green room and felt “an instant connection and an immediate understanding of what we had the opportunity to do in that moment.” Bárbara took the stage first to perform the Mexican anthem.

“Almost every person in the arena sang every word,” MŌRIAH remembers, who then followed Bárbara onstage, to perform the American national anthem accompanied by a guitarist fusing the song with

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