World Champion pugilist Nikhat Zareen now shifts her focus towards the Paris Olympics

 

It has been a sensational rise to greatness for Nizamabad’s very own World Champion Nikhat Zareen, who defeated Thailand’s Jutamas Jitpong with a unanimous 5-0 scoreline to bag the gold medal at the IBA Women’s Boxing World Championship in Istanbul.

The Indian pugilist was in fine form as she won gold medal at the Strandja Memorial in February and now she has backed it of with a big result at the World Championship.

With the gold medal around her neck, Zareen joins the esteemed company of some of the former World Champions including the superstar MC Mary Kom. However, Nikhat is clear that this lays the path for her to achieve the Olympic dream in Paris in a couple of years’ time.

“I’m happy and feeling really emotional that I’ve won the gold medal for my country. I will now do my best to fulfil my dream of winning an Olympic medal,” she said after winning the Gold medal.

The final match against Jutamas Jitpong looked like a very close bout as Nikhat smashed the first round but the Thai boxer came back in the second round with a split decision. So all eyes were on Nikhat Zareen to come out all guns blazing in the third round and that’s what she did. She highlighted how she wanted to win with a unanimous call as split decisions are often risky and can go in anyone’s favour. Her attitude in the World Championship is such that she likes to dominate her opponents as she has won all her matches with unanimous calls.

“I just wanted to give my best and win by unanimous decision. A split decision can go either way, so I did not want to take the chance. The idea was to win the first two rounds by unanimous decision and then take it a little easy in the third round. [But since she won the second round by split decision] I had to go all out in the third round,” the Telangana pugilist added.

Nikhat Zareen currently competes in the 52kg category which is non Olympic category as she aims to get down to 50kg category and prepare for the Paris Olympics. She feels that going down by a couple of kilograms won’t be a huge factor for her in comparison to boxers who are trying to gain weight and go up the weight category ladder.

“It is a little hard [to change weight categories] as there are differences in each category. You are at a disadvantage if you go from a lower category to a higher one as most boxers drop weight before events to make the cut and you’d be facing stronger boxers.”

“But if I go to 50kg, it won’t make that big of a difference because my current weight is at 51kg and I’ll only have to drop a little bit of weight. I will continue in the 50kg category if my body responds well,” she explained.