The Indian men’s team returned home from Tashkent after their most successful campaign at a World Boxing Championships. Deepak Bhoria, Mohammed Hussamuddin and Nishant Dev, the rising star, each won a bronze medal to gift India their best showing, improving on the two medals claimed in Belgrade in 2021.
Coming on the heels of the four-gold show by the Indian women’s team at the recent World Championships in New Delhi, the triple-medal haul in Tashkent is indicative of the happy trajectory that Indian boxing has been on, leading to the country being second in the International Boxing Association’s rankings.
While the success of three boxers at the World Championships, earning $50,000 each, sparked celebrations, a sobering thought is that four of their team-mates, including Shiva Thapa, lost their opening bouts. Another six fell before the quarterfinal stage, where those beaten took home $3000 each.
Nishant took a road less travelled to be India’s top boxer in the Light Middleweight class and a World Championship bronze. With Haryana teeming with talent, the Karnal lad moved to Ballari in Karnataka and stayed competitive and in the frame. The U21 gold at the Khelo India Youth Games in Guwahati in 2020 was a watershed moment.
A World Championships quarterfinalist in 2021, he launched his campaign in Tashkent in great style, beating Sarkhan Aliyev (Azerbaijan) and Lee Sang-min (Korea), before forcing the referee to stop his pre-quarterfinal bout with Nidal Foqahaa (Palestine). He followed that up with another unanimous points verdict against Jorge Cuellar (Cuba), before losing a close semifinal contest with Aslanbek Shymbergenov (Kazakhstan).
Making his World Championships debut, Hussamuddin breezed into the quarterfinals with three unanimous points victories over Alen Rustemovksi (North Macadonia), Lyu Ping (China) and Eduard Savvin (Russia). He then secured a hard-fought verdict against Javier Ibanez Diaz (Bulgaria).
Considering his compatriots were up against seeded boxers in the semifinals and he was pitted against 21-year-old Saidel Horta Rodriguez Del Ray (Cuba), Hussamuddin seemed to have the best chance to make the final, but a swollen knee forced him to step away from the ring. But Hussamuddin, a dogged 29-year-old, has it in him to bounce back and give the Asian Games a good shot.
Bhoria, who gained the nod to compete in the World Championships ahead of Amit Panghal, the 2019 silver medallist, had a similar run to the semifinals, beating Luis Delgado, Saken Bibossinov, Zhang Jiamao and Nurzhigit Diushbaev. His semifinal clash with Billal Bennama (France) excited the fans enough to believe that he will now hold on to his place as India’s hope in the Flyweight class.
The experienced and enigmatic Thapa’s defeat by Yuri Dos Reis (Brazil) was the biggest of shocks. Ranked World No. 3 and seeded second in Tashkent, Thapa, a 2015 World Championship bronze medallist, has his endurance and strength tested in the final couple of minutes by the Brazilian.
That Bhoria and Nishant displayed great heart and temperament and went the distance in their semifinal bouts with Bennama, a two-time World Championship bronze medalist, and Shymbergenov, 2022 Asian champion, augured well for the future.
Since they did not make it to the finals, the three medalists will have to compete in the trials, likely to be held between June 19 and July 1 at the national camp. Be that as it may, the three-medal haul does spawn hope that India would do well in the Asian Games. But we will have to wait before we make any projections for next year’s Olympic Games.
There are a couple of reasons to tread cautiously on that front. First, many countries stayed away from the World Championships in protest against the IBA decision to let Russia and Ukraine compete under their flags. And, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has its own qualifying pathway for Paris 2024, beginning with the Continental Games in 2023.
From an Olympic Games perspective, the Asian Games becomes critical. The Indian women and men who claimed podium places at the World Boxing Championships will have to peak again at the Asian Games to seal Olympic berths without having to wait for the two qualifying tournaments in 2024.
The good thing is that Bernard Dunne, the High Performance Director, still untouched by the star culture that sometimes creeps into elite sport in India, has come up with a system that will keep at least three or four boxers in each weight category on their toes. An assessment system will replace selection trials.
However, it is not as if the boxers have made the most of the opportunities. The gaps between the first and the second-ranked boxers in nearly all weight categories, as evidenced by the assessment table available on the Boxing Federation of India website for the Elite Men Camp in March this year, is rather stark.
Barring Nikhat Zareen and Lovlina Borgohain, who are guaranteed Asian Games tickets by virtue of their World Championships gold medals, all other boxers will hopefully strain their every sinew to win approval and vie for honours in Hangzhou. And that can only mean one thing: Indian boxing will compete with other disclipines for a share of the attention of Olympic-sports fans.
