Five time World Champion boxer Mary Kom may be India’s best hope for Olympic gold at the 2012 Games. Ameesha Joshi wants to help tell her story.
Ameesha is one of two documentary filmmakers who has been following the Indian women’s boxing team for 6 years now. Their story will end in just a few days at the London 2012 Olympic Games, where Mary Kom could be the first Indian woman ever to go home with the gold.
Co-director and Cinematographer Anna Sarkissian is in Liverpool right now with Mary Kom for her final days of training.
The 35-strong Indian women’s national boxing team trains year-round, six days a week in blistering heat and heavy downpours. As you can imagine, women’s boxing is neither popular nor widely accepted in India, where many women are pressured to marry and abandon their career aspirations.
With This Ring
The film Ameesha and Sarkissian are making is called With This Ring, and it goes inside the training camps and into the boxers’ lives as they push their bodies to the limit and strive to balance their responsibilities as dutiful daughters, wives, and as in Mary Kom’s case, mothers.
“The topic fascinated us for many reasons,” said Joshi, co-director of the film. “India has some of the best women boxers in the world. They have risen to the top from very humble circumstances.”
“Although I grew up in Canada, my parents emigrated from India and I’m aware of the cultural expectations and could imagine some of the criticism these woman would’ve faced. We knew we had found some extraordinary trailblazers and their inspirational stories needed to be shared.”
Cinematographer and co-director Sarkissian expressed similar thoughts. “I’ve always been really interested in stories that would otherwise be overlooked or forgotten,” she commented.
“As for what intrigues me about these women: they are so unique, and yet unassuming. For a long time, they didn’t really understand why we were interested in filming them. Despite a few perks, they live tough lives, and train in difficult conditions to pursue a sport that many might consider laughable. I have profound respect for the amount of discipline, physical and mental strength that boxing requires and am in awe of their dedication.”
When the two started this project six years ago, several of these Indian women were ranked #1 in the world – and yet they were completely unknown.
Now Mary Kom is leading the charge to the London 2012 Games in the hopes of bringing home gold and gaining the respect of her fellow Indians.
And maybe even changing the way society thinks about women’s boxing.
In general, it’s fairly exciting news that the entire 2012 US Olympic team will have more women competing this year than men; that’s a first, and a proud tribute to the 40-year anniversary of Title IX, the landmark law that assured more athletic opportunities for millions of girls and women across the United States. In all, there will be 286 boxers, with 36 of them women. The U.S. will be sending a total of three female fighters: Marlen Esparza, Claressa Shields and Queen Underwood.
The limitations opportunities for growth
Yes, the women have only 3 weight divisions — flyweight (106-112 pounds), lightweight (123-132 pounds), and middleweight (152-165 pounds) — to the men’s 10 weight divisions.
As of today, shortly before the Olympic competition begins, there is still only one photo of female contenders on the official Olympic website boxing “featured photos” page. Maybe that will change soon; this is history in the making after all.
And in a related note, one hopes that the women’s boxing teams will not have to fly coach while the men’s teams go first class, like Australia’s female soccer and basketball teams and the Japanese women’s Olympic soccer team. Sigh.
Finally, while I was thrilled to hear that Afghanistan was working to field a team of Olympic hopefuls, I was deeply disappointed when top favorite Sadaf Rahimi lost her only chance at a wild card invite (a special berth granted to nations that would not otherwise be able to qualify). Her performance at the women’s world boxing championships in China was not promising, with her fight being stopped short a minute and 20 seconds into the first round because she was doing so poorly. Next time, maybe these incredible women will get more resources and have a better shot at qualification.
The schedule
The women’s Olympic boxing rounds begin on August 5th (Round of 16), and continue on August 6th (Quarterfinals), August 8th (Semifinals), and end on August 9th (Finals). NBC will will televise 73 total hours of boxing coverage over 16 days, from elimination bouts to the men’s and women’s finals. Same-day coverage will air from 2 to 5 p.m. during the week, with six hours of live coverage airing each day on the weekends.
To satisfy cable and satellite operators, NBC is requiring viewers to prove that they have a cable or satellite subscription in order to access the online options. Which sucks for people like me, who don’t have a television at all. You can bet I’ll be looking for other options.
You can find the full boxing schedule as well as the fight results on the London 2012 website.
The women to watch
I’m hard pressed to narrow this down to only 5 fighters, and for me the real battle will be in the flyweight division, as you’ll see.
Taylor first made Irish boxing history at age 15 in the first officially sanctioned women’s bout ever held in Ireland (she won). She’s the top seed in the women’s competition, and has a bye straight into the quarter-finals.
She’s picked up plenty of media attention — including a Lucozade commercial that shows her tearing up the heavy bag. That commercial came out shortly after she first came to my attention, and she’s been my fave contender the whole way.
Definitely an Olympic underdog, 28-year-old lightweight fighter Quanitta “Queen” Underwood won her berth in the Olympics at the last minute.
Underwood is a five-time national champion who won the first US Olympic boxing team trials in February. But she dropped a one-point decision to Norway’s Ingrid Egner in the world championship prelims, falling just short of Olympic qualification.
She came up rough, with few advantages. A father in prison, running with the wrong crowd, a failed suicide attempt. At the age of 19, she began the process of becoming Queen, the boxer. She racked up loss after loss, but boxing kept Queen away from her self-destructive lifestyle. In 2007, her persistence paid off and she captured her first championship.
She loved that first taste of victory, and she hasn’t stopped drinking from the cup of champions since.
I hate that she’s fighting in the same weight division as my top favorite, Ireland’s Katie Taylor. But the chance for glory is there, and Queen certainly has the capability and heart to grab it.
29-year-old flyweight Mary Kom, born Mangte Chungneijang Merykom, is a mother of two and the only woman boxer from India to qualify for the London Games. Kom is from a tiny village in a remote area of India, but she’s the only boxer in world to have won a medal in each one of the six World Championships (five gold, one silver), and she’s currently ranked world no. 4 in her division by AIBA.
24-year-old flyweight Ren Cancan is a product of the powerful Chinese athlete creation machine, and she’s the one for Mary Kom to beat, if she can. (Cancan has already beaten Marlen Esparza, also on my list below.)
She started boxing late, after switching to boxing from hurdling in 2002. She’s a police officer in China, from a very small southern province of Guizhou, and has made her way up in a very cold climate for women’s boxing. Her trainer Tian Dong noted “Women’s boxing entering the Olympics will have an impact on the sport here and there, but I don’t think it will affect overall conditions.”
Esparza grew up watching Julio Cesar Chavez fight on television, and she has much of his lightning-fast speed. She knows that when fighting outside the U.S., boxing styles differ, and she’s ready for the challenge. “In the U.S. you stay flat and hit with power. Outside the U.S. you try to bounce and be quick,” explained Esparza.
Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, the third fighter for Team USA, is not in my top faves, but she might just surprise the watching world by snagging a medal.
At 17, she’s the youngest on the U.S. team, and she boasted a 26-0 record until suffering her first loss on the road to qualifying for the London games. But she prevailed against the odds, and now she’s bouncing determinedly in her corner, waiting for her shot at victory.
“The topic fascinated us for many reasons,” said Joshi, co-director of the film. “India has some of the best women boxers in the world. They have risen to the top from very humble circumstances.”
Cinematographer and co-director Sarkissian expressed similar thoughts. “I’ve always been really interested in stories that would otherwise be overlooked or forgotten,” she commented.
Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, the third fighter for Team USA, is not in my top faves, but she might just surprise the watching world by snagging a medal.