Twelve Indian pugilist have made their professional debut at the first IBC Professional Boxing Fight card held here.
The first of the six fights was in the featherweight division between a young local lad, all of 19, against an experienced amateur boxer from Goa. With the crowd of about 800 spectators rooting for the local lad Sachin, it was action from the word go.
Both boxers started strongly matching each other punch for punch in first two rounds. Sachin was leading on judges score cards by a narrow margin of 10: 9. By the third round though, Sachin slowly took control of the fight, with clean insteps and countering when Pushkar's guard was down.
The Super Lightweight class witnessed some aggressive and exceptional performances, from both Pardeep Kharera of Delhi and Munish Sharma from Haryana.
Right from the word "Box" in the first round, both boxers went at each other with gusto and aggression, resulting in a lot of holding and shoving which were duly called by the referee in the Ring.
The main event for the night was in Super Welterweight division between one of the most experienced Indian boxers, Siddharth Varma against a young junior National gold medallist Devdarshan Singh from Haryana.
While Siddharth's exposure to both the WSB as well as multiple National Championships in the last decade was a huge advantage, Devdarshan surprisingly held sway and even took the second round in one of the Judges scorecards. In the end, it was a unanimous decision in favour of Siddharth.
All 12 boxers were presented with President's Purses' varying from Rs 30,000 to Rs 1,00,000 to be shared in ratio of 50:50. The trainers and the seconds of the boxers have to be paid 30% of the purses by the boxers.
All the bouts were officiated by Indian technical officials of the IBC, who have undergone extensive training under the tutelage of International Boxing Hall of Fame Referee, Stanley Christodolou, International Supervisor Mariana Borissova and WBA Medical Commission member John Hartley Fleming.
All the six fights were supervised by the WBA officials for correct application of technical rules and world pro boxing regulations.
The IBC series are the professional boxing competitions in India to identify the national champions and contenders in each weight division of the IBC.
