A small town boy from Bhiwani, Haryana representing India in the international Boxing ring and winning medals for the country. He then becomes the champion of WBOAsia PacificSuper Middleweight and WBOOrientalSuper Middleweight Champion. Sounds like a dream, no it is not. We are talking about our favourite and super handsome Indian Professional Boxer Vijender Singh. He has also been awarded the Padma Shri, one of the Highest awards for his contribution to Sports in India.
This man has won all the 11 matches he has played so far as a Professional Boxer. Sounds too good, right. But unlike every successful person, his journey too was never that easy. However, the Bigger the Dream, The Harder you need to work on it.
A Brief about his Journey
Well, it’s all started in 1997 when Vijender won a silver medal on the school level. Then in 2000, he went for nationals where he got the gold medal. After pure practice and hard work in 2003, he became All India youth boxing champion.
Turning Point
The turning point was in the Afro Asian games 2003 where he despite of being a junior boxer, participated in trials of selection and won a silver medal. His style of boxing is compared with Rocky Balboa character in Rocky film series, but he says his real influencers are Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, and Don King.
Commonwealth Games and Olympic
The real journey for him started at Athens Olympics 2004 where he lost the fight by 20-25 score against Mustafa Karagollu. After 2 years in 2006, he got his first win by defeating England’s boxer Neil Perkins in the semifinal but lost in finals and got a bronze medal. The same year he decided to move up in weight class and took part in the middleweight (75kg) in Asian games 2006 and won a bronze medal because of defeat in the semi-final by a score of 24-29. He was injured but still, he played.
2008 Beijing Olympics, Vijender becomes the first man to earn a medal in Olympics for India by defeating Calos Gongora but he lost the semifinals thereby satisfying himself with a bronze medal again. But there is always respect for someone who did something big for the country especially the first time.
Professional Career
In his career as a professional boxer, this man stands at a record of 11-0 thereby not losing any of his 11 fights. Here are a few records..
On 10th Oct 2015, he won his first fight as a professional boxer via KO. He defeated England’s Sonny Whiting in the 3rd round. Since then he is fighting regularly at super middleweight class.
O 16th July, 2016, he won vacant WBO Asia Pacific super middleweight title and that was a really tough fight, the fight went for full 10 rounds and Vijender won by unanimous decision.
Till 2017, he fought regularly but in 2018 he was struggling to land a title fight.
In his latest fight, he won and retained the title against Mike Snider on 13th July 2019 and makes him 11-0 streak unbeatable. I am sure, that one day he will surely join the greater stage and will make our country proud.
He received Padma Shri award in 2010 for his great performance for the country at an International level.
He is an idol for many boxers in India and because of him we started getting some really good fighters in boxing now. May the force be with you always 🙂