At the Paris Olympics, Nikhat Zareen may very well live and die at the mid-range. While most boxers in India prefer to stay on the outside and then move in swiftly, unleash their punches and duck out, India’s best boxer in this Olympic cycle prefers to stay in the eye of the storm.
Zareen is simply brave in just where she starts to box. You’ll rarely see her too close to an opponent, or too far away for that matter. She’s always precise in how far away she is from her challenger. Literally an arm’s length away.
The distance employed by a boxer can often be the hallmarks of a great fighter. The mid-range is that twilight zone – right at the edges of a boxer’s range – where arms extend perfectly and connect devastatingly. Move slightly in, and you invite yourself for a barrage of shots with not much defence left. Move out and suddenly there’s no one at the end of the attacks. The mid-range is a counter puncher’s arena. The realm where they have enough time to see a shot coming, slide out and stick a blow of their own.
28 years and two World Championships old – Nikhat Zareen is arguably India’s best boxer going into the Paris Olympics. There is Lovlina Borgohain who has that increasingly long list of accolades but is sparsely tested in her new weight class. There is Amit Panghal who has the pedigree but has spent the last three years embargoed in a bitter battle against the coaching setup of India and will have to find elite fitness in a short period of time. There is Nishant Dev, who has age and confidence in droves but operates in a weight class inhabited by the greats.
A boxer of Zareen’s ilk is rare in India. She fights a technical bout and has the ability to conjure a clear-as-day punch – one that forces even the ficklest of boxing judges to award marks in her favour, when all goes to plan. But it’s the range that she employs that allows for her punches to look like they’ve landed – and usually they do. Going into the Olympics, she will be considered one of the best boxers in the 51 kg category. Two World Championship gold medals in this cycle paint a very large target on her back.
But if there is one aspect of her style she is confident in, it’s her mid-range based game that clearly showcases punches landed and paints a rosy picture for the judges. This isn’t a boxer that clinches from the start and looks to the judges for help. From a very young age, her coaches made sure of it.
“When I started boxing, my coaches didn’t let me fight a lot at a short range. It’s why I would get hit a lot more when both fighters were closer to each other, because in a closer range there is a lot more clinching, holding and even wrestling. To a judge, those kinds of bouts are tougher to score. But when you fight from a distance and connect, the judges can see clearly that your punch landed,” said Zareen to the Indian Express before embarking on a month-long camp ahead of the Paris Games.
“If I can connect a punch from my range and then move back, it’s a lot tougher for my opponent to cover that extra ground while also trying to punch me,” says Nikhat. (Express photo by Abhinav Saha)
It’s a style of fighting that has worked for Zareen like a treat, especially against countries that produce boxers of a higher pedigree. Put her up against European, American or Oceania boxers and the fights become a matter of similar technique, but are separated by strategy, ring craft and seizing the moment.
“When you fight at medium range, the advantage is that you can always switch your bout depending on your opponent. If I can connect a punch from my range and then immediately move back, it’s a lot tougher for my opponent to cover that extra ground while also trying to punch me. And if my opponent tries to strike first and then misses, I have the time and distance advantage to then land the next shot. It’s a position that allows me to be an all-rounder of a boxer and go to any area where the fight leads to,” says Zareen.
But restricting herself to one particular style comes with its own set of problems. Even as a junior boxer, she would struggle against boxers from Haryana especially. The state would produce fierce and powerful punchers, who never had any quit to them and would often resort to clinching and wrestling to make a bout tougher to score.
Clinching challenges
Zareen would often lose those battles then. She still continues to struggle against boxers who engage her in a clinch and don’t let her skills come through. Thailand’s Raksat Chuthamat beat her at the Hangzhou Asian Games last year. Raksat is a familiar foe at international tournaments for Zareen. They faced each other in New Delhi during the World Championships as well – that decision too was split but went 5-2 in Zareen’s favour after it went to the IBA’s bout review system in a World Championship at home territory. Paris will not be as welcoming and boxers like Raksat and Vietnam’s Nguyen Thi Tamin will always look to make fights tougher to score using clinches.
Against top quality boxers though, Zareen continues to show that she belongs at that level. Former Indian national boxing head coach Bhaskar Bhatt, who led a nine-member team at the Tokyo Olympics describes the level at which the 28-year-old operates against an opponent of similar caliber. In 2022 on her way to a Strandja Memorial gold medal, Zareen disposed of Tokyo Olympics silver medallist and 2022 world champion Buse Naz Cakiroglu. The Telangana boxer scored a 4:1 split decision win.
The two-time World Champion is ready for her Olympic bout 🥊🥇
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“Buse Naz is a hard puncher and the key for Nikhat was to box her from a distance. The aim was to dominate the first round with long range and not let her stand her hard punch stance. Against a boxer like Buse Naz, going for medium range tactics can backfire too. So, in that bout, Nikhat changed her tactics in the first round, going for
long range punches and then once she unsettled her medium range stance, she reverted back to her own style.” says Bhatt. Zareen essentially moved out of her comfort zone to take on a challenging boxer – pragmatism that is now slowly entering her skillset when her primary range doesn’t work.
At the boxing programme in Paris, these will be some of the challenges faced by a first-time Olympian. Zareen has had to make way for MC Mary Kom in the past and has had to wait a while for her turn. India has had three boxers win a bronze medal at the Olympics to this date. A 28-year-old now, she may not get the same number of opportunities that India’s most known boxer did. Which is why Paris might have to be treated like Vegas – all in.
