India’s medal drought continues at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and there will be sky-high expectations from the country’s ace boxer Vikas Krishan as he hits in the ring on Tuesday morning, hoping to seal at least a bronze medal by winning his quarterfinal bout against Uzbekistan’s Bektemir Melikuziev in the men's 75kg middleweight bout.
The 24-year-old Haryana lad, who is the 2011 World Championship bronze medallist and also the 2010 Commonwealth Games gold medallist, will, however, have his task cut out. Bektemir Melikuziev is the 2015 World Championship silver medallist and also a former Youth Olympics and Youth World champion in 2014, and will be a tough nut to crack in Rio. In fact, Vikas boxed with Melikuziev and lost to him comprehensively at the 2015 Asian Championship.
The Uzbek is four years junior to Vikas, and the Indian has openly declared that if he manages to get past Melikuziev, no one can stop him from winning a gold medal. “Melikuziev is a formidable boxer, there is no doubt about that. Having seen the way Vikas is boxing in the first two rounds, you can expect anything. Reputations don’t matter in the ring,” Indian boxing head coach Gurbux Singh Sandhu said in an informal chat from London.
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The positive thing about Vikas’ march to the quarterfinals is that he has won both is bouts without much of a sweat. The Haryana Police DSP was never stretched by Turkey’s Onder Sipal as he won 3-0 by a unanimous decision. This is the second time that Vikas has outboxed Onder – he had beaten him in the third round of the 2011 Baku World Championship.
Vikas will hope to make the most of his height advantage over the Uzbek as his opponent is known to pack a lot of power and stamina. “No outcome in boxing can be predicted because the nature of the sport is such that one who boxes well in nine minutes wins the bout. We are keeping our fingers crossed,” Sandhu says.
Besides Sandhu, Vikas is accompanied by his personal coach Jagdeep Hooda and a friend, who has joined him to enable to stay relaxed in the run-up to the bout.
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The Indian pugilist had kickstarted his campaign in style thumping USA’s Charles Cornell by a unanimous decision to progress to the pre-quarterfinals. The win over the American must have helped obliterate the memories of the 2012 London Olympics, where he had lost to another American Errol Spence, where the Indian boxer was initially adjudged the winner before Spence appealed against the judgment and the decision was overturned on technical grounds.
If Vikas crosses the quarterfinal hurdle, he will become the second Indian boxer to win an Olympic medal after Vijender Singh – interestingly – he boxes in the same weight category (middleweight) – Vijender used to box. Maybe this sweet coincidence will work as a lucky charm for Vikas.
