It was a boxing bout four years in the making.
For someone who has gone through countless hours in a ring and has faced boxers from the remotest parts of the world, very few have left an impression on Nikhat Zareen as Buse Naz Cakiroglu has. In fact, both Nikhat and Cakiroglu had a common adversary at one point – MC Mary Kom. In 2019 when Cakiroglu defeated the six-time Indian world champion, it reinforced Mary’s much-needed exit from international competition and allowed Nikhat – who had a tumultuous time dislodging the legend from the national picture – an opportunity to shine internationally. A year later, Nikhat would have her own chance to train her sights at the Tokyo silver medallist and delivered. It was a Strandja Memorial match which the Indian won 4-1, but the scoreline doesn’t reflect the chess that was played in the ring that day.
Nikhat won then but felt that she had come across one of the best boxers in her category. The next four years have been spent preparing for this one fight that may or may not have happened. It didn’t happen at the 2023 World Championships in New Delhi because Cakiroglu went up one weight class for a brief period of time, and then it didn’t happen again at the 2024 Paris Olympics. But in one of her final camps before Paris, Nikhat chose to go deep into enemy territory. In a two-week long camp, the Indian boxer chose to spar with Cakiroglu in Kastamonu, where the training centre was located in the middle of a jungle.
Describing the atmosphere of training in a jungle area with the word ‘sukoon’, Nikhat had, at that time, told The Indian Express how even their sparring was a cat-and-mouse game. “I don’t have any important championships to look forward to so I was there just to train. No boxer shows her 100% game in sparring. ‘A’ game side mein rakh ke, ‘B’ game koshish karte hai (We hide our ‘A’ game, try to work on the ‘B’ game).”
On Wednesday, Nikhat lost 5-0 against Cakiroglu at the 2025 World Championships in Liverpool in the quarterfinals. With this loss, the Indian will not be able to three-peat at the Worlds – a feat that would have added to the impressive tally of medals that she has collected across events barring the Olympics. Nikhat, who would have expected a fight full of ferocity after such a long wait to face Cakiroglu, was met with that same cat-and-mouse game she had partaken in, in the jungles of Turkey.
Cakiroglu’s approach to the fight was laid out seconds into the first round. Fists down, and chin out – the Turkish boxer had laid out the invitation for Nikhat. And the Indian obliged, moving forwards and hunting for shots. She missed some, with a probing right hand not finding as much success as she would have liked. Cakiroglu, for her part, waited for those misses and then went for a single punch before searching for her own version of an exit ramp. The showmanship of the Turkish boxer seemed to have swayed the judges, who all gave the opening round to Cakiroglu.
In the second, Nikhat was trailing behind on the cards and became sloppy. But in the midst of it all, she caught the two-time Olympic silver medallist with a right hook that shocked her and then another right that made the referee dock a point off the Turkish former World Champion. The judges continued their viewing of a different bout, once again awarding Cakiroglu a 5-0 upper hand. The third followed a similar pattern where the Indian attacked more, landed more, and lost altogether. The final scorecard read 29-27 and spelled an end to Nikhat’s World Championships.
