LORD OF THE RING
SHIVA THAPA, THE SLIGHT SLUGGER FROM GUWAHATI, IS THE NEXT BEST THING IN INDIAN BOXING
at the modest, 10 x 10 gym of the Ramada hotel in Gurgaon, a lithe presence practises shadow boxing, the only sound that of his gloves as they cut the air. Oblivious to the attention he has been drawing—a boxer is not a common sight in this upscale hotel—he continues till his father gently asks him to stop; reminding him that it is time for breakfast.
Breakfast was just an excuse, his father knew that Shiva, India’s biggest Olympic medal hope in boxing, needed to relax. The young boxer has been upset because two commercial shoots in the last two days wasted a lot of his training time, much more than he had expected. But this is not the first time his father has been dealing with Shiva’s disappointment.
For the last 15 years, Padam Thapa, 54, a former karate instructor and now owner of a factory manufacturing steel almirahs in Guwahati, has been the primary driving force in Shiva’s long and arduous journey—from the SAI training centre near his home to the Olympic ring. It’s been a rigorous routine, father and son wake up at 3 in the morning, cycle to the SAI centre, carrying nuts and sprouts as breakfast, return home at 6 to catch school at 7; post-school, go for training again, followed by maths tuition and finally return home at 9 pm.
“I was always interested in body contact sports but never got enough opportunities to train. I wanted to send my children to the Olympics and that’s why I married early at 17,” says Padam. Shiva, the youngest among his four children, finally fulfilled his dream. Shiva’s elder brother Govind is also a state-level boxer.
The dream lay shattered in 2012 when Shiva was knocked out in the first round at the London Olympics. He wants to make the most of the second chance he has earned after four years. “My strength is that I don’t fight recklessly, which is also seen as a weakness. I’m working on blending my style, a calculated fight with adequate aggression,” says Shiva, sipping a glass of lime juice.
The new-found aggression was what helped him in defeating World Championship bronze medallist Keirat Yeraliev of Kazakhstan in the Olympics qualifier. It was not an easy bout as during the trials he had got a cut above his left eye. The injury needed stitches because of which he couldn’t take part in sparring sessions for fear that the cut might open up again. The recollection of that bout pumps up the otherwise soft-spoken Thapa. “I did not care about his reputation. He was between my Olympic dream and me. I had to destroy him.”
Thapa is different from the Bhiwani Boys who put Indian boxing on the world map—with Jitender Kumar and Akhil Kumar making it to the quarterfinals, and Vijender Singh winning a historic first bronze for India in the ring—both in style and in pedigree. He credits his quick feet to hours of practising the “bamboo dance” with his sister at home and his ability to unleash knockout punches when the chips are down to the tenacity he picked up from watching Mike Tyson’s bouts as a kid. “In fact, I took up boxing after I saw Tyson’s fights. I was just awestruck by his charisma and the way he made boxing look so stylish,” Shiva says. And he recently had another brush with international boxing royalty when his left hook was noticed by Manny Pacquiao, regarded as one of the greats of all time and a world champion across eight divisions over a glittering two-decade-long career.
“Knowing that Manny had praised me during the Worlds is just the confidence booster I needed before Rio,” he says. But Shiva’s Olympic dream no longer remains his own. With cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and the Sultan of Bollywood, Salman Khan, as his cheerleaders, Thapa knows that his journey must end only on the medal podium.
“I have it in me to win a medal. I also have the blessings of a billion Indians”