Nikhat Zareen and Manju Rani, who both won medals at the World Championships, racked up resounding 5-0 victory on Thursday to advance to the quarterfinals of the 6th Elite Women’s National Boxing Championships.
In the National Boxing Championships, Nikhat Zareen and Manju Rani easily advance to the quarterfinals
In the 50 kg pre-quarterfinals match, Telangana’s Nikhat, the current world champion, destroyed Meghalaya’s Eva Waynie Marbaniang. In the 48 kg Last-16 match, Manju Rani of the Railway Sports Promotion Board (RSPB) put on an equally commanding performance to easily defeat Uttarakhand’s Kavita. In the 2019 World Championships, Manju Rani took home the silver medal.
While everything was going on, Jyoti Gulia of RSPB, the 2017 youth world champion, advanced into the 52kg Last-8 after winning a unanimous decision over Neha Tantubai of Jharkhand.
On the third day of the competition, where 302 boxers have been battling across 12 weight categories, Simran of Chandigarh (48kg) and M Dhivya of Tamil Nadu (54kg) were among the other fighters to win and move on to the quarterfinals.
Simran defeated A Ritu Rao of Odisha by the decision of the referee to “Referee Stops the Contest,” while Dhivya defeated Muni Leya of Arunachal Pradesh with a score of 5-0.
Assamese athlete Lovlina Borgohain (75 kg), who won bronze in the Tokyo Olympics, will be one of the competitors to compete in Friday’s Last 16 contests. The quarterfinals will be played on Saturday.
At the 2011 AIBA Women’s Youth & Junior World Boxing Championships in Antalya, she took home the gold medal. Zareen became the sixth Indian woman to win a gold medal in the IBA World Boxing Championships when she won the gold medal at the 2022 IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships. Since June 2021, Zareen has served as the Bank of India’s general banking officer. At the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022, she earned a gold medal.