Boxer is battling to connect cultures
If Saturday’s bout unfolds according to his team’s plans, Ajax-based middleweight Sukhdeep Singh Bhatti will pummel Argentina’s David Ezequiel Romero before a sold-out crowd at Brampton’s CAA Centre, giving his growing fan base a reason to buy tickets in the future. The location isn’t incidental. Bhatti grew up in Chakar, India, a small town in the heart of Punjab province, and relocated to Ajax last year to launch his pro boxing career. Showcasing him in Brampton, where nearly one in five residents lists Punjabi as their first language, gives the 26-year-old a tool as critical to boxing success as fast hands and punching power. A following. Bhatti’s rise highlights the evolving role race and ethnicity play in marketing fighters, and positions the undefeated boxer as a potential pioneer.
No Indian-born boxer has ever won a professional world title.
“Not yet, but it’s coming,” said Bhatti, who’s 5-0 as a pro. “I want to be the first.”
In the past, a fighter like Bhatti — one of a handful of South Asian fighters competing professionally in North America — might have been saddled with an explicitly racial nickname.
The tradition spanned several generations, from fighters such as Nova Scotian legend Sam (The Boston Tar Baby) Langford in the early 1990s to Nigel (The Dark Destroyer) Benn in the 1990s.
But these days giving Bhatti a moniker such as The Brown Bomber might be considered offensive, even by pro boxing’s lax standards. The same goes for pitting fighters of different skin colours against each other, then profiting off racial tension among fans, says Bhatti’s promoter Tyler Buxton.
A race-baiting fight promotion can still make money — Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor milked the Great White Hope and Black Villain formula for a record payday in 2017 — but Buxton says he can’t force Bhatti into that template.
“It’s not New York in the 1930s. It’s not (as simple as matching) a Jewish guy against an Irish guy,” said Buxton. “I don’t think it’s the same anymore, and I don’t think Canada is that way.”
Bhatti uses the nickname Chakria, an homage to his hometown. Where his physical appearance marks him as South Asian in mainstream North American society, Chakria sends a specific message about his origins and the community backing him.
“It’s like your whole village is with you,” he said. “When you’re in the ring, your whole village is fighting. My village has a warrior type of energy (and) everywhere I go, I represent my village.”
That support translates into ticket sales. By Tuesday morning, Buxton said, organizers had sold 650 tickets online using a discount code. That figure accounts for 13 per cent of CAA Centre’s capacity, but doesn’t cover Bhatti supporters who bought tickets in other ways.
“Those cultural relationships allow people to understand the sport a little more,” said Mississauga-based sports marketing agent Sunny Pathak, head of NewPath Sports and Entertainment. “I’d encourage Sukhdeep to focus on winning … maybe it’s a different conversation when he gets to 11-0 or 16-0.”
Bhatti spent the second half of his amateur career splitting time between a national training centre in India and Ajax, where he stayed with relatives and worked with veteran trainer Ryan Grant. After failing to qualify for the 2016 Olympics, Bhatti joined the semi-professional Super Boxing League in India. Fighters earned money for the bouts, but the results don’t appear on their official records.
That circuit, co-founded by Pakistani boxing star Amir Khan, organized elite Indian amateurs into teams and matched them in a season-long round-robin tournament. Bhatti finished 5-0 and was voted the tournament’s top fighter.
Grant says those results aren’t an accident.
He says Bhatti has a keen understanding of the difference between boxing and fighting, and blends both into a style opponents struggle to solve.
“He’s got that gullyness in him,” Grant said. “When push comes to shove, he’s not getting pushed and shoved. He’s not from here, so the hunger’s a little bit different. He knows his purpose, why he’s in Canada: to become the best Indian fighter ever, and the first world champion.”
The tournament also boosted Bhatti’s following both in India and among Indian communities abroad where people still follow sports back home. Bhatti has already received offers to fight in Vancouver and England, Buxton says, where local promoters are betting he’ll help grow and diversify their audiences.
“It’s like Felix Trinidad fighting in New York,” Buxton said, referring to the retired Puerto Rican star. “It’s that community (bond) … As he moves along, gets ranked, wins a Canadian title, obviously we’re going to be travelling.”
Beyond that, Bhatti hopes to increase India’s international boxing footprint. Since 1988, the country has sent 30 boxers to the Olympics but returned with just one medal: middleweight Vijender Singh’s bronze in 2008.
Pro welterweight Neeraj Goyat has built a solid career, and fought in Toronto last April, but injuries suffered in a June car crash forced him out of a high-profile showdown with Khan.
Bhatti, meanwhile, is chasing a world title at middleweight, where Mexico’s Saul (Canelo) Alvarez rules and elites such as Gennadiy Golovkin and Jermall Charlo also compete. But the middleweight landscape might change by 2022, and Bhatti says he’ll be ready to make history.
“Next three years, world title,” he said. “I’m there.”