“You know I’ve hit him with a few shots so I know he’s got a chin,” Jordan says. “And he...He. Can. Take. A. Bang. So the first time we sparred, I think ‘this guy is pretty’, so I was a bit relaxed, I think I’m gonna bang this guy. Then he hit me with a big right hand and my head went whooooo” – Jordan does a Little Richard yodel – “and then I’m like, ya ya ya ya, OK, I’m gonna keep my hands up. He can bang! He’s got very, very heavy hands. He just looks pretty.”
“Pain man, I’ve got used to it,” Vijender laughs. “It’s not hard to get used to. I love boxing, na, so you have to take it. Everyone has a purpose, and my purpose is fighting.”
Haroon had his work cut out as well. When Vijender started out with him, he could barely do one pull-up.
He had big, but weak shoulders. When he threw punches, he was firing from his arms, not his shoulders.
His left hand was much weaker than his right.
He did not have the endurance to last a six-round fight, let alone go the whole hog at twelve.
Haroon put him through a series of biomechanical tests at Bolton University to find his weak spots.
“We put him through some heavy plyometric training to get him to really explode with his power,” Haroon says. “We will work with really heavy weights to build his strength and go straight to real quick, explosive stuff – like, let me give you an example – so I’ll make him bench-press a big weight that he will struggle to lift, and then straight up, down on the floor to do some fast press-ups, all the way down flat, and back up real fast.”
Out of the gym, Vijender went for his long, aimless walks, sometimes walking for three hours at a stretch, coming back late at night and crashing in his hotel room. Some days, he went looking for new kinds of food. He swung between feeling very lonely – he did not have either the language or the cultural background to banter with his new gym mates – and feeling very excited about his new life. Some nights, he spent hours playing games on his PS4.
In the gym, Vijender hit a tyre with a hammer, wore an armour of heavy chains to do pull-ups, did deadlifts and squats, and sucked up the interval sprint days – if there’s one thing he doesn’t enjoy, it’s running.
“And very quickly, because he had that great base you know, he started punching so hard, it was unreal,” Haroon says. “And one of those days, Lee, he’s watching V real close, and he turns to me and he says, “You know what, I reckon he’s going to be a world champion.””
In his second fight, Lee and Haroon watch Vijender’s work with quiet satisfaction. He is moving in the right direction. His opponent is another dreamer – Dean Gillen, a fireman from Nottingham, who, at 33, made his debut as a pro just a few months ago. He won his first two bouts; this is his third fight. Gillen had boxed as a hobby in his 20s, but decided to turn pro when he won a gold at the World Police and Firefighters Games in 2013.
Gillen is father to three daughters; the youngest is eight. He believes that he is in the best physical condition of his life, that mentally his job has made him fearless and calm in the face of danger, and he wants to test this out.
Gillen starts the fight in spirited fashion, confidently moving in behind his jab. Vijender is patient, collected and on-target with his jabs. He’s not fighting on his toes any more. A minute into the first round, there’s an exchange of jabs and Vijender sees an opening and unleashes two body shots. He’s looking to hurt his man from the get-go. A few seconds later, Gillen throws a hook to the head from mid-range and misses. In a flash, even as Gillen’s hand is still in the swing, Vijender’s big right slams into his unguarded face and fells him.
Vijender does not react in any way, just takes half a step back and waits for Gillen to get up.
When Gillen puts his guard up again, Vijender hits him immediately with two hard hooks to the body, which sends him to the ropes. And then Vijender is on top of him, throwing everything at him, till Gillen collapses in the corner.
“He’s got it now, he’s ruthless,” Lee says later. “He just knows now when to go in for the kill.”
Excerpted with permission from Ringside With Vijender by Rudraneil Sengupta, exclusively available on the Juggernaut Books app.
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