‘On one hand, you’re wasting money,’ she’d say. On the other hand, you’re squandering your time’. You know what it’s like to grow up in a middle-class family. You just had to grin and bear it, Sahani said after winning silver in the 48kg weight class at the Strandja Memorial Boxing Tournament.
Indian boxers returned from Strandja with eight medals u2014 three silvers and five bronzes. Despite losing gold to Uzbekistan’s Shodiyorjon Melikuziev, a silver medalist at the Asian U-22 Championships, Sahani’s career is on the right track.
For the 25-year-old, certainty about his career path has never been absolute. To get away from his mother’s constant questions, he moved to Meerut’s sports hostel in 2011, where at least his basic needs were met and he didn’t have to go to his mother for money.
While that convinced his mother for a few years that her son wasn’t wasting his life away in a futile sport, bigger doubts began to creep in on their own.Once I got into the hostel, my family began to believe in my dreams.
But then, just a year later, AIBA banned the Indian boxing federation, and everything spiralled out of control again, he says. It was one of the lowest points in his boxing career.
With boxing events drying up due to the suspension of the Indian Amateur Boxing Federation (IABF) and no job to fall back on, Sahani almost quit the sport around 2015.
My basic needs were being met at the hostel. But even in the minor events in which I competed, I began to suspect foul play when I would outperform my opponent and still lose. I began to feel as if I had reached some sort of invisible ceiling.
There were boxers at national camps who I could have beaten with one hand tied behind my back. And I remained in the sports hostel. I hadn’t gone there just to eat free food. At some point, I began to suspect that my mother had been correct all along.
This was a pointless endeavour. I went home and told her I was quitting and would do anything to help me earn money, he says. Instead of quitting, he switched allegiances to Nagaland and competed in the National Boxing tournament in 2018, winning bronze.
A year later, he was given his first opportunity to represent India at the GeeBee Boxing Tournament in Finland, where he took silver. He soon got a job with the Assam Rifles as well.
Because the 48kg weight class is not in the Olympics, he will most likely move up to the 51kg weight class later this year, putting him in the crosshairs of World Championship medalist Amit Panghal. But first and foremost, he hopes to make the Indian team for the World Championships in Tashkent in May.
He believes he has earned a chance at a World Championships medal after years of hard work.
Ab nahi lagta boxer banke galti kar di, she says. (I don’t think becoming a boxer was a mistake anymore), he states flatly.
