Asian Games 2014: Why Mary Kom won't stop fighting

There is a refreshing earnestness about Mangte Chungneijang Mary Kom, better known just as Mary Kom. You’d expect a five-time world champion and Olympic medallist to have a somewhat world-weary air about her. You’d think a 31-year-old mother-of-three would want to hang up her boxing gloves and spend the next few years making up for lost time with her children. Not Mary. She still has the exuberance and playfulness of a teenager getting ready for her high school prom, if that high school prom was a boxing tournament. For Mary, boxing is as natural as breathing. “What kind of question is that?” she says, laughing, when asked why she loves boxing so much. “I don’t know. I really enjoy it. We are doing different kinds of training, jumping, punching with dancing kind of moves—fully enjoying. Since I was a kid, I really loved fighting. Even when I watched movies, I only watched action movies, martial arts movies. No change till today.” We are sitting outside one of the residential buildings at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in Delhi, where Mary is training for the 2014 Asian Games. Mosquitoes buzz around her bare legs but Mary is kind enough to continue our conversation instead of dashing to safety behind locked doors. Only athletes and coaches are allowed inside. There aren’t many world champions with such a lack of affectation. The Asian Games will be Mary’s first international competition since she won Olympic bronze in London in 2012. For most of that time, the Indian Boxing Federation was banned by AIBA, the sport’s governing body, and India’s boxers – male and female – were cut adrift. [caption id=“attachment_1718219” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Mary Kom will be giving it her best shot. Reuters[/caption] For Mary, though, the ban had a silver lining. “It is really funny,” she says, again with a laugh. “For me, it is not difficult. I had another baby. I had some break time. For me, it was no problem. It was a good time.” But she knows the ban is no laughing matter. The humour disappears as she details the damage done to Indian boxing. “Obviously for the young boxers, they are in trouble. They can’t go for tournaments. If we are fighting in more tournaments, we have more experience and more confidence. “If we are not fighting in any competition, then unnecessarily we are losing years and unnecessarily doing a lot of hard work, a lot of training, [it is] all useless. There is no point.” The good news: Things might finally be turning around. AIBA has provisionally approved a new entity - called Boxing India - to run the sport. Boxing India held its elections last week and it appears India’s boxers will be able to fight in national colours at the Asian Games. “I hope the federation is in good shape and we pray and hope that everything will work out,” Mary says. As it is, returning to the sport after childbirth is not simple. After Mary had twins in 2007, she took a two-year break from boxing and her comeback was a painful and emotionally draining experience. “That one month in Hisar was the most difficult camp experience I have ever had,” Mary writes in Unbreakable, her autobiography. “On the one hand, I was missing my children like crazy. On the other, my body let me down with all these aches and pains. Half the time, I was sick or nauseous and only managed to do some of the workouts and a little bit of sparring.” Mary persevered, made the India team and won silver at the Asian Boxing Championships. That wasn’t enough for some though. “This time you got only a silver,” her father said. “Do you want to end your career in disgrace… you should have stopped when you were at the top.” Mary was able to reason with her dad but other tongues were wagging. She pushed herself even harder to shut them up. The reward was gold at the fifth World Championships, a victory she calls the most precious of her career. Thankfully, this time around things have been much easier physically, despite gall bladder surgery five months after her second Caesarean. Mentally, however, Mary has to contend with a few demons after being left out of the Commonwealth Games squad in July. She still hasn’t made her peace with the events leading to her exclusion. Mary’s principal rival in India is Pinky Jangra, who she fought in the finals of the national trials. The scores were tied at the end of their bout but the judges ruled in favour of Pinky. The same thing happened to Mary in 2009. It didn’t sit well with her then and it doesn’t sit well with her now. “There was a little bit of politics [against the North East] in selection,” she says. “They have done this twice to me. The same opponent, the same Pinky. She has never beaten me. I have never been hurt (emotionally) in any international competition. Only in India. That decision is made only in India.” As she speaks, she slams her left fist on her right palm, unable to contain the hurt and injustice she feels. “If they had given her nine points and me eight – kind of a one-point difference or two-point difference, I can accept it. If they are doing that, I will understand that I am losing,” she says. “But they are giving us the same points and when they announce the decision, referee says he favours a win for Pinky. What does that mean? It is all nonsense. All the judges, referees, full federation, they are playing this kind of politics.” [caption id=“attachment_1718235” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] There is a love for the sport that goes beyond normal. Reuters[/caption] Mary quickly regains her equilibrium and makes it clear she isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. “But the past is the past,” she says. “I am proving them wrong because I am fighting. I will prove myself again. If it is one-sided result, then nobody can stop me. That challenge is still giving me motivation. I will never stop. While these people are there, I will never stop fighting.” Mary had to fight Pinky again to make the Asian Games squad and just like in 2009, there was only going to be one winner. Anoop Kumar, the women’s boxing head coach, says it is Mary’s fighting spirit that defines her. A successful boxer must master technique and tactics, he points out. She (or he) must possess strength, stamina, speed and agility. “But without fighting spirit, it doesn’t matter what other qualities you have. You can’t be a boxer,” Kumar says. “Mary’s best quality is her mental strength. She is mentally very strong. She never accepts defeat.” Most of Mary’s success has come at 45 and 46 kg but at the Asian Games and the Olympics, there are only three weights for women: 51, 57-60 and 75. For the five-foot, two-inch Mary, this means getting into the ring with bigger, taller opponents. Against them, Mary’s typical approach of throwing her jab—bop-bop-bop - doesn’t work because they can keep her at a distance. So she has been learning to work inside and throw more combinations with harder punches. “For the past many years, my punches were not in combinations,” she says”. “Three-four-five. Attack and counter-attack and, then, again. We are training to time punches. When the opponent comes forward, you have to time the punch. You have to catch it quickly,” she says. “I am playing south-paw (left-handed). So always my right is the jab. When the opponent opens her guard, then I need to land strong punches: dum-dum.” Mary does have success at 51 kg to fall back on, having won the 2012 Asian Boxing Championships at that weight, as well as pocketing an Olympic and Asian Games bronze. The new scoring system—under which Mary will fight for the first time also rewards attacking fighters. Previously, boxers knew the score after every round. That led to fighters taking it easy if they were leading while others essentially quit if they were far behind. The new system only reveals the score after the bout, thereby forcing the boxers to keep punching in the later rounds. The downside is the system can confuse fighters used to the old system. “This is my first fight after the rule change and maybe there will be a confusion but let’s see what happens,” Mary says. Earlier the same evening, Mary arrived for training at the Indira Gandhi Stadium wearing a purple sweat-shirt about 45 minutes after everyone else and greeted head coach Anoop Kumar with a cheeky grin. She doesn’t look big enough to be boxer, let alone a world champion but she fights with a ferocity few can match. A short warm-up of jogging and stretching and she is in the ring, where she belongs. There is no trace of the baby fat you’d expect to see on a mother but Kumar says she isn’t as sharp at 51 kg as she is at 46 kg. “She also can’t do as much conditioning work as she used to when she first started but since she is so experienced, she can cover those gaps,” he says. The boxers train by fighting two sparring partners for a minute each, then resting for one minute. Mary doesn’t think she needs to rest. She argues with the coach and battles for three full minutes before taking a break. Her opponents don’t hold back either. They are encouraged to challenge the queen of Indian boxing, to push her back on her heels, to hit hard. Mary’s feet start to dance as she moves around the ring and her arms pump forward and back like short, sharp pistons. Roughly 15 minutes of sparring is followed by combination training. A coach gets in the ring wearing punching pads on his hands. Mary’s job is to strike them rapidly and with power. The coach follows her around the ring, pushing her back and forcing her to punch with her weight going the wrong way. Mary screams as she throws each punch, the thwacks echoing around the room. She lands a left hook, then a right, then another left. She throws straight lefts and overhand rights. She has incredible hand speed and there is barely a breathing space between punches. “Mary has a very strong spine. That is how she is able to punch with such speed,” Kumar says. Then, suddenly, Mary throws back her head and laughs at something. It is a surprising sight for such a brutal sport and you remember that for Mary, this is a game as much as anything else. A game she loves and enjoys. At the Indira Gandhi stadium, the other 40 or so boxers at the camp are cooling down. All of them have skipping ropes in their hands and the sound of rope on carpet is much like the sound of rain on a tiled roof. It adds a soothing backdrop as Mary continues to pepper the punching pads, determined to meet her latest challenge head on, like she has all the others before it. Her blue boxing gloves are a blur as she drums out a consistent beat on the punching pads. One-two, one-two-three. It is the elemental rhythm of her life and you understand why, even though she is a 31-year-old mother of three, even though she has five world championships and an Olympic medal, she won’t stop fighting.