Pooja clinches gold, Mary Kom settles for silver at Asian Boxing Championships

The India boxer Pooja Rani (75kg) successfully defended her title as she outpunched in-form Mavluda Movlonova to hand the country their first gold at the 2021 ASBC Asian Boxing Championships in Dubai on Sunday.

The Olympics-bound pugilist was up against a strong Uzbekistan boxer, who came into the match beating London Olympics medallist Marina Volnova in the semi-finals.

Pooja showed great sharpness and tactical brilliance and put pressure on the opponent with timely punches.

She continued her relentless attack and left no chance for Uzbek boxer to fight back before completing a comprehensive 5-0 victory and winning her second successive gold medal at the Asian Championships.

It is also Pooja’s fourth medal at the championships after gold in 2019, silver in 2012 and a bronze in 2015.

Earlier Mary Kom and Lalbuatsaihi finished their campaigns with silver medals after going down fighting in their respective semi-finals.

Both the boxers started the summit clash with aggressive mindset and soon exchanged powerful blows attempting to unsettle each other. The five-time Asian Championships gold medallist Mary Kom used all her experience against the Kazakh boxer and made her work hard but it wasn’t enough as the later tilted the hard-fought game successfully in her favour and emerged champion with a narrow 29-28, 28-29, 30-27, 29-28, 28-29 scoreline.

It is the second silver for Mary Kom at the Asian Championships who has previously won titles on five occasion-2003, 2005, 2010, 2012 and 2017 besides silver in 2008.

Lalbuatsaihi (64kg) also gave her all in another close-fought gold medal but couldn’t manage to get past Milana Safronova of Kazakhstan and suffered a 2-3 defeat to win silver medal in her maiden outing at the Championships.

Later, another Indian boxer Anupama (+81) also ended up with silver as she lost to Lazzat Kungeibayeva of Kazakhstan 2-3 in yet another nail-biting final.

The defending champion Amit Panghal (52kg) and two other pugilists Shiva Thapa (64kg) and Sanjeet (91kg) will be seen in action on Monday in the men’s finals.

The International Boxing Association (AIBA) has allocated USD 4,00,000 prize money for this Championships. The gold medallists of men’s and women’s categories will be awarded with USD 10,000 while both the silver and bronze medal winners will take home USD 5,000 and 2,500 respectively.

Panghal will be up against the Rio Olympics and world champion Uzbek pugilist Zoirov Shakhobidin of Uzbekistan. While Assam boxer Thapa will be challenged by the Asian Games silver medallist Mongolia’s Baatarsukh Chinzorig.

Second seeded Sanjeet will also have a strong challenge of the Rio Olympics silver medallist Vassiliy Levit, who is chasing his fourth gold medal of the Asian Championships.

Eight Indian pugilists Simranjit Kaur (60kg), Vikas Krishan (69kg), Lovlina Borgohain (69kg), Jaismine (57kg), Sakshi Chaudhary (64kg), Monika (48kg), Saweety (81kg) and Varinder Singh (60kg) secured bronze medals with their semi-final finish at the event which witnessed the presence of 150 boxers from 17 countries including strong boxing nations such as India, Uzbekistan, Philippines and Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, one of the most exciting moments of the women’s category of the Asian Boxing Championships came when Kuwait made their debut in the female competition.

Noura Almutairi, a newcomer in the Kuwaiti national team, made her debut at the light welterweight (64kg) where she finally claimed a valuable bronze medal in Dubai.

The Kuwaiti girl never competed any international boxing championships or tournaments out of her country and made a historical step in Dubai.

Bahrain and UAE sent women boxers to the Bangkok ASBC Asian Elite Boxing Championships in 2019 following the official approval of wearing Hijab in the international events. Kuwait continued this pathway from the regional countries and Noura became their first ever female boxer who attended an the international boxing event.

The Kuwaiti girl was inexperienced in comparison to the other boxers in her weight category but she had good technical skills and fighting spirit against India’s Lalbuatsaihi in the semi-finals of the light welterweight (64kg).

The more experienced Indian won the contest but Noura impressed during her debut in the international championships, landed nice punches and she had good skills.