All About Middleweight Boxer Pooja Rani And Her Inspiring Journey To The Top

Women have the power to reproduce and develop a new life inside them, which perhaps is the most supreme ability of the entire humanity. But they have been suppressed and subjugated for years and stereotyped to be restricted to many roles with boxing not being one of them.

Women and boxing have never been related even though the sport is gender-neutral and women around the world are champions at it, the patriarchy in the society shies away from giving the women the due credit they deserve. Therefore applauding one of the most talented boxers of our country, here we are going to tell you all about Pooja Rani and her inspiring journey to the top.

More About Pooja Rani Bohra

Born on 17th February 1991, Pooja Rani Bohra is a middleweight Indian boxer who hails from Nimriwali village, Bhiwani district in Haryana. Haryana is considered to be a sports cradle of India but it is also known for lack of liberty for the feminine gender.

When Pooja started training at the Hawa Singh Boxing academy her father did not even know of it. From the injuries to the gear, Pooja had to hide everything from him in order to become a boxer.

Boxing is not a girl’s game as per the societal norms and since Pooja was going against the flow, it would have been disastrous if her father would have known. So, she kept mum. Whenever the braveheart boxer used to get injured, she had to hide it from her family and stay at a friend’s place for a few days so that her father may not find it out.

However, something as big as this cannot be hidden from the family for too long and when Pooja’s father actually found this out, he banned her from boxing. Her coach Sanjay Kumar Sheoran also tried to convince her parents and it took her father almost 6 months to finally agree to send Pooja to accomplish her dreams.

Pooja Rani’s Major Wins

• Starting in 2009, she captured the state title after defeating Preeti Beniwal and later conquered the National youth title in the 60kg category.
• In 2012, she rocked both Asian Games and Arafura Games held in Australia by scoring silver medals.
• In 2014, she won a bronze at Asian Games in the 75kg category. Further, she also won a gold medal at the South Asian Games in 2016.
• This made her one of the top contenders at the Rio Olympics but she lost a pre-qualifier match at AIBA Women's World Boxing Championships in the same year and thus could not be a part of the Rio Olympic games.
• After this, in 2017 a series of injuries including hand burn and shoulder injury followed. This made her confidence graph hit a decline. But she gradually picked pace and switched to the 81kg category.

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• In 2018, the marvellous boxer won the gold at ASBC Asian Championship by defeating China’s Wang Lina. Despite all this, she proudly became the first Indian to qualify for Tokyo Olympics 2020 and also made it to the quarter-finals. However, she lost to China's Li Qian by going down at 0-5. Despite the loss Pooja was praised by a lot of her fans and sports enthusiasts.

Pooja still stands as the reigning national Asian champion, with six national titles to her name. Her story is very relatable as all of us do have to convince our family to understand our dreams at some point in life.

So, we must learn to neither give up on the family nor on our dreams, taking time and making them agree is the better and the happier way because when you achieve your dream one day you will have your own people to celebrate the victory with. Therefore strive hard with perseverance and passion and success will be all yours to enjoy!

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Let us know how Pooja Rani’s story inspired you. Stay tuned to Her Zindagi for more such articles.