Six-zero and counting. Vijender Singh could not have asked for a better way to start his professional boxing career. Lampooned by many for turning his back on the amateur arena and giving up the chance to represent India at multi-national sporting events, Singh was under tremendous pressure to prove he had made the right decision. But after fighting through tremendous pain, almost a year later, he has emphatically shown that he belongs to this arena, notching up six straight comfortable wins, all of them via knockout or technical knockout, against various opponents.
Now, the prodigal son returns home. The Thyagaraj Sports Complex in New Delhi will be the venue on Saturday for Vijender Singh’s first professional boxing bout in his home country. And it is not just any other bout, it’s a title bout. The 30-year-old from Haryana will be fighting Australia’s Kerry Hope for the World Boxing Organisation’s Asia Pacific super middleweight title.
Riding high on six consecutive wins, Singh cut a confident figure on Monday talking about wanting to win it in front of his own fans. But that might just be bravado, because the Olympic medallist might be facing his toughest challenge yet. This will be his first 10-round professional fight, so Singh will have to quickly adjust to the longer format.
The other aspect of it is that in Kerry Hope, Vijender Singh will be facing a very formidable opponent.
High hopes
Hailing from Merthyr Tydfil, a town in Wales, 34-year-old Hope, who now represents Australia, is a veteran on the professional boxing circuit and has more than a decade’s experience in the ring.
His numbers are impressive. In 30 fights till now, Hope has won 23 of them and lost just seven. He won his first eleven bouts and has the experience of fighting in title bouts. He defeated Caleb Truax in 2009 to win the World Boxing Foundation International super middleweight title and pulled off a huge upset in 2012 to defeat bookies’ favourite Grzegorz Proksa twice to win the European Boxing Union middleweight title. He also enters the bout in good form, having recently won the World Boxing Council Asian Boxing Council middleweight title in 2015, after defeating Poomrase Yoohanngoh.
Hopes was also ranked number three in the world middleweight rankings a while ago. That, however, is unlikely to faze Vijender Singh as he was also ranked No 1 in the world in the same category by the International Boxing Association in 2009.
Left of centre
What could give the 30-year-old sleepless nights, though, is the fact that Hope is left-handed. Though Singh has defeated a left-hander, Alexander Horvath, in his fourth professional bout, one of his worst defeats in his amateur career came against a leftie.
It was 2012 and Vijender had travelled to London as the toast of Indian boxing after his medal in Beijing in 2008. Hopes of an encore were high as Singh breezed through to the quarter-finals. But against Uzbekistan’s Abbos Atoev, a left-hander whom he had whitewashed 7-0 in a bout just two years back, Singh crashed to a 13-17 defeat and was eliminated from the Games.
That might be playing on the Indian’s mind as, for the last month, he has been sparring exclusively with left-handed boxers under the tutelage of his eagle-eyed coach Lee Beard, according to a report. Beard summed up the challenge that the left-handed Hope will provide: “You simply don’t get a lot of chance to face them. On the other hand, southpaws face orthodox boxers all the time. So they know what strategies work against them.”
As it happens before any big boxing bout, the two main competitors have gone hammer and tongs, trash talking each other in the build-up. Hope has promised to “chop him [Vijender] down”, as well as calling him a “nobody”, while Singh shot back by saying that Kerry had “no hopes” of winning.
That is perhaps all for the benefit of the cameras, but there is a lot at stake for Singh. Win and he breaks into top 15 of the World Boxing Organisation’s rankings, which would pave the way for him to take part in a world title bout. Lose and questions about whether he took the right decision to turn professional will resurface yet again.
But in front of his adoring fans, finally on Saturday, Vijender Singh will have come back home.
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