Head to New Delhi’s KD Jadhav Sports Stadium, where the 2023 edition of the IBA women’s boxing world championships will get underway in a day’s time, you are sure to come across promotional posters with the faces of Lovlina Borgohain and Nikhat Zareen on them.
That is to be expected – the two have been the stand out performers for the Indian boxing team in recent years. Borgohain is a two-time bronze medallist at the World Championships and the only Indian boxer to medal at the 2020 Olympics. Meanwhile, Zareen is a gold medallist from the 2022 World Championships.
But while both will be expected to live up to their billing, they will be in somewhat unfamiliar territory in New Delhi. Neither will compete in the weight division in which they earned their most significant hardware.
Borgohain, who won her world and Olympic medals in the 69kg welterweight category, will compete at her first world championships in the 75kg middleweight division. Zareen, who won a gold medal in the 52kg flyweight category, will compete at a World event for the first time in the 50kg category, labelled as light flyweight. The switch will require the two to make technical and tactical adjustments and will also likely result in them competing against a more challenging field.
Lovlina Borgohain and Nikhat Zareen celebrate after won Gold Medals during 6th Elite Women’s National Boxing Championship | Photo Credit: A.M.FARUQUI/The Hindu
This was a move that was inevitable, says coach Bhaskar Bhatt. “Neither the 69kg nor 52kg category are Olympic weight divisions. When the weight categories for the Paris Olympics were announced last year, the 69kg category was replaced by a 66kg category. The women’s 51kg category was replaced by the 50kg division (still classified as flyweight). It was clear that Lovlina had to move up a weight category and Nikhat had to move down,” he told Sportstar.
With the new weight classes known well in advance, Bhatt says the boxers have been preparing to shift to their new categories. “We knew that Nikhat and Lovlina would have to start competing regularly in the 50kg and 75kg categories this year because this is the Olympic qualification cycle. So we have been planning this move very systematically,” he says.
Of the two, it is Borgohain, who faces the tougher challenge tactically. At 5ft 10in, she was tall for her former weight division and had to cut a lot of weight to make the 69kg limit. As such, she enjoyed a reach and strength advantage against most of her opponents. That suited Borgohain’s style as an outside fighter. Her opponents routinely had to make the first move and get in close in order to get within punching range while having to brave getting picked off by the Indian.
At the 75kg category however, she will be at a power and size disadvantage or at least will be in parity against the natural middleweight boxers. Borgohain will no longer be able to back pedal and will have to stay within range of her opponents for far longer than in the past.
“At that range you need to be very sharp at all times because you can get hit at any fraction of a second. You also have to be more active. You can’t just throw one or two punches which you could when you were fighting from a distance,” says Bhatt.
While the Worlds will be the first real test for Borgohain at 75kg, things will be slightly easier as some of the strongest boxers in the weight pool won’t compete here. Reigning world medallist Tamara Thibbeault from Canada will not take part since her country is boycotting the games, protesting Russian and Belarussian athletes being allowed to participate.
Borgohain is outwardly confident about her prospects. “I am more comfortable in this (75kg) weight category. There is no tension to control my weight. Yes, I have also changed my technique a bit, to go with the higher-weight category.”
“The focus is on improving the power in my punches as my opponents will be much stronger than what I encountered in the 69kg category,” she said.
Zareen, in contrast to Borgohain, has more experience boxing at the weight division she will be competing in Delhi. Zareen was naturally a fighter in the flyweight categories – which have alternated between 51kg and 52kg during Zareen’s career. She never could claim the category as her own owing to the dominance of Mary Kom at that weight. That changed in 2022 as Mary began to wind down her career after the Tokyo Olympics.
While Zareen won gold in the 52kg weight category at the 2022 World Championships, she would drop down to the 50kg category for the Commonwealth Games, where she also won gold.
While Zareen’s achievements were credible, both the 52kg weight category at the 2022 Worlds and the 50kg class at the Commonwealth Games didn’t have the strongest fields.
None of Zareen’s opponents at the two competitions – except for Thailand’s Jutamas Jitpong – competed at the Tokyo Olympics. The top of the podium of the 50kg weight category at the 2022 Worlds, in contrast, featured Rio Olympics bronze medallist Ingrid Valencia and Tokyo silver medallist Buse Naz Cakiroglu.
Unlike Borgohain, Zareen is not expected to make too many adjustments to her game. While moving down a weight class means competing with boxers who on paper should be quicker than her, Zareen hasn’t shown any vulnerability in her previous showing at this category at the 2022 CWG.
At Birmingham, Zareen has the advantage of being the bigger boxer, with heavier punches compared to most of her opponents in the 50kg division. However she does not compromise on her swiftness. At the 2022 CWG, Zareen was both the bigger puncher as well as the faster boxer.
That works perfectly for Zareen’s style of boxing. “She is someone who prefers to fight from medium range. Right now, she has almost achieved mastery of that range. She has excellent reflexes, which is very important since she is always in punching range of her opponents. But because she is in that range, she always has a chance to score as well. She throws a lot of punches that judges like to see but right now we are also trying to be more accurate,” says Bhatt.
Indeed while Zareen is expected to face a tougher field in New Delhi with the likes of Cakiroglu in her division, she is unlikely to be too worried. Just before the 2022 Worlds she’d faced the same boxer in the semifinals of the Strandja Open and had beaten her by a unanimous decision.
While Borgohain is expected to face the trickier task, Bhatt is optimistic about her chances too. “She has some challenges, but her key strength is her experience. This will be her fourth world championship. While there are other long range fighters in the Indian team, none have boxed at as many high level competitions as Borgohain. She has the knowledge to find solutions against tough fighters since she has faced all sorts of boxers in the past. But regardless of what happens, this will be an important learning for both her and Nikhat. It will give a good idea of what to expect at the more important competitions going forward, in particular the Olympics, ” says Bhatt.
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