Boxing World Championships: Nikhat Zareen finds a way around ‘clinching’ to advance to quarterfinals

It’s hard to look at it as anything but respectful. When the choice is to engage with Nikhat, or dabble in the dark arts and clinch and obfuscate the judging of the bout most Asian countries have chosen to strategise and go for the former option. At the World Championships in New Delhi, when the 29-year-old had to go through six matches on the way to a gold medal, while being unseeded, it was the bouts against Thailand’s Chuthamat Raksat in the quarterfinals and the final against Vietnam’s Thi Tam Nguyen that were the toughest to judge. But Nikhat escaped narrowly. It is a problem that Nikhat has had to graduate from when she faced the challenge domestically against Haryana boxers, who have tried to rough her up, and is now becoming commonplace at top-tier international tournaments.

Her strategy in these fights is trying to get a clean first shot in the exchange before her hands are tied up and the referee has to separate the boxers. The only time the strategy failed was the Paris Olympics where she lost to eventual Chinese gold medallist Wu Yu. On Tuesday, at the World Championships, Nikhat lost the first round against Yuna 3-2 and suddenly the Paris flashbacks weren’t too far off.

But in the second round, the referee – as has been the case at these Worlds under World Boxing – docked a point from Yuna for excessive clinching. That led to the second round going in Nikhat’s favour – four judges gave her the round. The third too followed the same blueprint where the Japanese continued to clinch despite being behind on the scorecards, got docked a point and then couldn’t make up for the healthy lead India’s 51kg entrant had accumulated — the final score read 29-26 x4, 30-25 x1. Crisis averted.

Turkish delight

Despite all of these teething troubles, Nikhat’s real World Championship begins now. A bout that could easily be the gold medal bout, will be fought at the quarterfinals and see the Indian face off against Turkey’s Buse Naz Cakiroglu. Cakiroglu is a familiar opponent for Nikhat. She was her sparring partner prior to the Paris Olympics and has faced her once in a consequential bout – which was a 4-1 win at the Strandja Memorial in 2022. Cakiroglu, for her part, is a two-time Olympic silver medallist and is part of a crack women’s boxing team that has multiple Worlds and Olympic medals to their name.

Even at these World Championships, some of India’s top women’s boxers have been felled by Turkish pugilists. Lovlina Borgohain, a perennial medal hopeful, went down to 2021 Jr World Champion Busra Isildar with ease. Sakshi Chaudhary, another World Cup gold medallist, who many expected to be a medal winner at the Worlds, crumbled even before the bout against Paris silver medallist Hatice Akbas began – employing an unwinnable tactic of trying to lock her opponent up before a punch could be landed – and after two points were docked by the referee in the opening round, that pipedream met a swift demise.

Nikhat’s prolonged time outside of the ring after her disappointing Paris campaign could be a factor in her bout against Turkey’s best. Ring rust may be a real factor but the Indian has been moving fairly well in her two bouts. But those bouts have not been against someone the caliber of Cakiroglu – who will test the Indian and has enough elite technique to trust herself to a boxing bout rather than a clinching clinic.