New Delhi: Mary Kom has a halo. How else does one describe the whiff she whips up, the drama she comes with, the theatre she constructs, her glistening, glittering presence that illuminates rooms, rings, and hearts? From the time she hopped inside the practice hall to the moment she wound up her last interview of the day — the overhead halogen lights giving a physical feel to the ethereal halo — she was the showstopper. No, she was the show. And she knew it.
There were knowing glances at the waiting press. The draining warm-ups, the guttural grunts, the mean punches that tore the air, the show-off of her unfair elasticity, the quiet confidence that comes with the quiet knowledge of being the best boxer in the history of Women’s World Championships.
File image of MC Mary Kom.
The jumper came off first, revealing her sculpted deltoids, and with every punch she threw, the muscle definition got more pronounced. 200 skips followed — at least till the last count — without as much as breaking a sweat; every hop measured, every skip timed.
“It’s raining or what?” she would exclaim after the cardio, looking at the swathes of sweat that had enveloped her arms. That ended the hors d'oeuvre.
Sparring time. Three junior boxers of varying heights and weights took their turns. Mary let them come at her, feinting, defending, counter-punching, and occasionally — and deliciously — attacking. The jabs flew at lightning speeds, the uppercuts arrived without warning, and the hooks unsettled the younger and bigger opponents. She moved with feline grace and menace, exploring and creating angles where none existed.
“Mary’s flexibility, especially for her age, is unbelievable. She can bend backwards with ease which helps her avoid getting hit,” her coach Chhote Lal Yadav told Firstpost.
To use a cricketing analogy, it is akin to swaying away from a bouncer and watching it all the way to the wicketkeeper as opposed to ducking it and exposing oneself to variable bounce. In contact sports, the margins are extremely small. A slight misjudgment or hesitation can put the boxer in the firing line.
Mary’s tactic of swaying away, or bending backwards, theoretically, is a gentle throwback to Muhammad Ali's famous 'rope-a-dope', but can be tested against taller women with greater reach. Yadav, however, swears by the six-time world champion’s flexibility.
“It may appear risky against taller opponents, but that’s the gift from God that she has. Her flexibility is stunning,” he says. “At her age, people may injure their lower backs attempting those bends, but she is different.”
Performance Director Raffaele Bergamasco has been slyly keeping an eye on Mary while training a bunch of girls, including the other nine members of India’s World Championships-bound squad. He instructs Mary to get in the ring, and the 36-year-old obliges. 20 push-ups later, she is ready.
The Italian is relentless. He asks Mary to attack. The combination of right jabs and left hooks is put to test. Bergamasco makes her cover every corner of the ring, often asking to put more power in her jabs. Mary obliges, of course. Another sparring session with coach Yadav and some more shadow boxing follow, where her right jabs fly off the elbow like a spitting cobra, setting the stage for the killer left hook. Punching the thin air was systematically being converted into abstract art.
“Mary is obviously very different,” Bergamasco says. “Most Indian boxers have a problem with their positioning in the ring and speed, but Mary is one boxer who has no such issues.”
Plaudits aside, Mary understands the importance of the World Championships. The 3-13 October competition in Russia’s Ulan-Ude is not an Olympic qualifier, but a medal will ensure an automatic berth for next year’s Asia/Oceania Olympic Qualifiers to be held in Wuhan, China.
“This is a very important event because all the top boxers will be participating. If I win a medal and play the Qualifiers next year, I will meet the same boxers in China. I have to be very focussed. I will get a chance to assess other boxers, gauge their strengths, and plan for the future. I will get to know who is stronger or weaker. It is very important from the learning point of view,” she said.
Mary should know. A first-round bye means she will face the winner of Azize Nimani-Jutamas Jitpong clash in her first bout. While Jitpong is a 21-year-old Thai boxer who returned from pro circuit last year and won two bouts at the 2018 World Championships, Germany’s Azize beat the Indian star in the second round of the 2016 World Championships in Astana. The loss meant Mary failed to qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics.
“I can’t take any boxer lightly as there are a number of skillful girls. It is important to read a boxer early. If I am not able to do that, it is natural to have doubts before a bout, which is not a good thing,” she added.
AIBA’s rejig of weight categories earlier this year means 48kg is no longer an Olympic class, and the 2012 London Olympics bronze medallist will compete in the 51kg division. An increase of three kilogrammes means packing more lean muscle and increasing power, as men’s World Championships silver medallist Amit Panghal recently told Firstpost. But while Panghal is still easing into his new weight category (52kg), Mary has frequently shunted between 48kg and 51kg in her career and faces no predicament when it comes to weight gain or loss.
“I generally maintain a good weight, so it is easy for me to lose 1-2 kgs. I don’t think there is much change in my approach or training when I switch weights. If I fight in 51kg, I have to be stronger and need more energy. I think I have good stamina because I don’t have weight issues.
“Also, it is not as if I am new to this category. I usually train with taller and stronger girls. I can’t say if it is an easy weight class, because you can have only so many plans and strategies in place, and anything can happen in the ring,” she explains.
Mary, obviously, knows a thing or two about the 51kg class. Both her Asian Games medals (bronze in Guangzhou, 2010 and gold in Incheon, 2014), as well as the bronze in 2012 London Olympics, have come in the flyweight division, which kind of explains the hype each time she enters a world event. In World Championships alone, she has medalled in seven of the 10 editions so far (six gold medals, one silver). Naturally, she enters the event as a runaway favourite. Does the noise ever get to her? Mary laughs.
“Sometimes I am scared. If the performance goes down, what will people say? These thoughts worry me at times,” she says.
“People talk about my previous performances, that how they have been so good. What if I am not able to perform? All the expectations will go down. That scares me. It spurs me to work doubly hard.”
It is revealing to realise that after all that she has achieved, Mary Kom still seeks validation; that despite all those medals, headlines, glory, fans, and a biopic, expectations still unnerve her, that the proverbial halo is a non-existent ghost that sits on the extreme periphery of her persona. It’s a mask she — deliberately or otherwise, perhaps we’ll never know — wears so well and so lightly.
“I don’t know if I still have to prove something. People’s mindsets are different. Some say I have done enough, some say ‘yeah, she has done okay.’ I can’t control that. Kya bolungi mai if someone still makes fun of me or say 'she has done what she could but now she is over.' What can I say to those people? I can only answer with a medal.
“If I don’t get any medal here, people who are jealous of me will find their voice. How am I going to stop them? Only a medal will stop them.”
When told that she is admired across the country and various popularity surveys consistently rank her well above some of the other well-known celebrities, she cups her face and laughs.
“I can’t believe that. What can I say?”
“I think I deserve my success. It is not easy after becoming a mother, that’s all I can say.” Mary Kom — mother, boxer, haloed or otherwise — does have a thing to knock you over.
from Firstpost Sports Latest News https://ift.tt/2oAOfWN
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