SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Jose Navarro was having some trouble with an Indonesian boxer when he heard a familiar voice booming through the buzz of the Olympic arena.

 The voice belonged to his brother. The message was urgent.

 "Tira, tira (Throw, throw)," Carlos Navarro Jr. kept shouting. "Tira, tira."

 Inside the ring, Jose Navarro was listening. His brother never got his Olympic moment, but he was helping Navarro shine in his debut.

 The advice paid off as Navarro opened up a close fight Tuesday to beat Hermensen Ballo 16-10 and advance to the second round of the 112-pound division.

 The win kept the U.S. team perfect through seven fights, with five boxers yet to fight.

 "I heard him screaming the whole time," Navarro said. "I heard him tell me to throw the 1-2 and I did that. He knows what he's talking about."

 Indeed he does. Carlos Navarro barely missed making the 1996 Olympic team himself and has run up a 22-1 record at 126 pounds since turning pro.

 He came to Sydney to help his 19-year-old brother do what he couldn't -- win an Olympic gold medal.

 "He's been there for me and I've been there for him," Jose Navarro said. "If I win the gold medal it will be for him as well as for me."

 Navarro remembers being with his brother after his loss to Floyd Mayweather, Jr., at the 1996 Olympic Trials that kept him from making the team that went to Atlanta.

 It's an image that stayed with him as he fought his way through the junior ranks and then onto the U.S. team.

 "I went into the locker room and saw him sitting there looking down," he said. "It was very sad."

 It was a happier time Tuesday, although Navarro was wishing his father, Carlos Sr., would have also been on hand to watch.

 His father missed his flight to Sydney and was expected to arrive in time for Navarro's second round match Sunday against Hicham Mesbahi of Morocco.

 "I still had to do what I had to do even though my dad wasn't here," Navarro said. "If he was here, you would have heard him. He would have drowned out my brother."

 It was his father who got the Navarros into boxing as a way of keeping them out of trouble in crime-ridden South Central Los Angeles. Navarro's eight sisters and three brothers live with the family in a two bedroom, one bathroom home.

 Carlos Navarro buys and sells used cars, with limited success. But from the time Navarro was a baby, there was always a heavy bag and a speed bag in the back yard, and the boys set up their own makeshift gym.

 "He did his best to support us," Navarro said. "It was good growing up. We were very poor, but with a big family there was always something entertaining."

 Navarro's dream is not only to win a gold medal, but to be able to cash in on it as a pro enough so he can build his father a new home.

 "If everything goes well, that's what I'd like to do," he said. "But I would miss my neighborhood. I like to hear the noise of helicopters, police sirens, gunshots. I'm so used to it that I don't really want to leave."

 Navarro's win extended a dominating streak by American boxers, who have not only own seven straight fights, but have looked impressive in doing so.

 "Everybody's doing their job," Navarro said. "I'll be happy if they keep winning and I keep winning."

 Cuban boxers have been just as impressive, if not more.

 Two more Cubans won Tuesday, as Cuba matched the U.S. start with a 7-0 run itself. Mantilla Rodriguez, who would meet Navarro for the 112-pound gold if both continue to win, won 20-8 over Tai-Kyu Kim of South Korea, while veteran Juan Hernandez won his 156-pound fight on the mercy rule, 17-2, in the third round.