3 min readApr 6, 2026 10:50 PM IST
For many of the members of the Indian women’s boxing team, the later rounds of the Asian Boxing Championships were going to be an acid test of sorts – one that they hadn’t faced since the Paris Olympics came to a close.
Preeti Sai Pawar had to go up against Paris Olympics bronze medallist Aeji Im of South Korea. Nikhat Zareen was set to take on China’s Wu Yu, a boxer who had beaten her in the Paris Olympics Round-of-16 on the way a maiden Olympic gold and Lovlina Borgohain, India’s only Olympic medallist in the current squad, was up against Aziza Zokirova, a 70kg World Championship bronze medallist from Uzbekistan, who had recently made the switch to the 75kg category.
The recent case in women’s boxing has veered towards younger upcoming Indians taking it to some of the best in the world, whereas the tried and tested from the country have not been able to conjure the performances that has earned them their spot in the national team.
Preeti, forever having to shuffle her weight class to be a part of the national team, has started to finally find her feet in the treacherous 54kg category. It’s the one teeming with boxers, partly due to many in the lower weights not being able to dislodge Zareen.
On Tuesday, she notched yet another feather to her cap, picking up a unanimous 5-0 decision victory over Im Ae-ji, the first-ever South Korean woman to ever win a boxing medal at the Olympics. Add that to the Haryana boxer’s ever-growing list of Olympic scalps after she had defeated Chinese Taipei’s Huang Hsiao-wen in Greater Noida late last year in the World Boxing Finals. Incidentally, Huang will be Preeti’s opponent in the final, with the Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist a significant challenge for the rising Indian.
But where Preeti succeeded, India’s veteran stars Nikhat and Lovlina suffered crushing losses to strong opponents in their weight categories. Zareen’s loss to Wu was similar to the one she faced at the Paris Olympics. The Chinese pugilist usually operates at a higher weight class but swoops down during Asian and world-level events and seems to enjoy the prospect of facing the two-time World Champion.
Borgohain continued her baffling downward spiral, this time to an opponent jumping up a weight class. After receiving a bye in her first bout, this was Lovlina’s first match of the tournament and ended in a unanimous decision loss.
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