After a big scoop, Nishant dreams about Paris Olympics

When Nishant Dev was entering his hotel in Tashkent ahead of the start of the IBA Men’s Boxing World Championships, the 22-year-old eyed an ice-cream seller outside of the premises. Heaving a heavy sigh, Dev, who was India’s entrant in the 71 kg weight category, said to himself that the World Championships was the last place he should have an ice cream and tried to put the idea out of his head. Days continued to pass and Dev continued to move up the ranks. And then came the quarterfinals – and more importantly, Cuban boxer Jorge Cuellar to beat. An Indian boxer beating a boxer from Cuba – a country famous for producing some of the best pugils in the world, was unheard off.
On the eve of a fight whose hory bears heavily down upon the shoulders of Indian boxers, Dev gave into his urges and got himself that ice cream he had been eyeing. “The next morning when I went for the weigh-in, I was overweight a few grams. Instead of thinking of the fight against the Cuban, I ended up focusing on running here and there and warming up in an effort to lose those few extra grams,” said Dev. Hours later the boxer from Karnal, Haryana beat Cuellar in an aggressive performance and pocketed his first World Championship medal, becoming one of three Indians to finish with a bronze medal in the country’s best-ever haul at the Worlds.
At 22, Dev is two World Championships-old – invaluable experience at this level with the Paris Olympics just over an year away. But his love for boxing started in a mud house in Karnal at a very young age. When he was eight years old, Dev’s uncle, who used to box in a club in Germany, would arrive back to their village in Karnal. Having grown up looking at posters of him, Dev began to idolise the sport of boxing at a very young age. One day his uncle threw a ferocious hook that knocked the punching bag out of its bearings, and Dev was hooked for life.
But it was only when he was 12, that he got to properly start training as a boxer. At first it was the insence of his father, who supported his dream to become a boxer, but wanted his son to wait a few years before starting to train. And then there was the freak accident that set his start back a few years.
“In 2010 I broke my shoulder. I fell from the roof. It was night and in those days we had very limited electricity. When the light went out, I was playing hide and seek with my brothers and sers and slipped from the stairs and fell down a floor. I had to rest the shoulder for a year before properly beginning training in 2012,” Dev said to the Indian Express. The shoulder injury was a constant irritant for Dev, who never really completely recovered from it until March 2021 when he went under the knife after not being able to lift his arm up during a training session because of the pain.
When he finally started boxing though, things didn’t come as naturally as he believed they would. Training at the Karan Stadium in Karnal under his coach Surender Chauhan, he would initially struggle. “The first time I was put into a sparring session my coach, I started getting tired and gassing out at the end of the fight. It was close to night around 7:30 and the light was very dim. When the coach looked away, I kicked my opponent a couple of times because I was so tired and couldn’t lift my arms,” said Dev.
In his semi-final bout against Kazakh boxer Aslanbek Shymbergenov, the results went into bout review.  (Source: Boxing Federation)
Slowly but surely, he started to show his aptitude in the sport. In 2017 at a junior-level tournament, he was scouted the Inspire Institute of Sport and has spent five years under renowned coach Ronald Simms, who also trained two-time Women’s World Championship boxer Nikhat Zareen. At the time of his scouting, he would participate in the 48-kg category. A good diet in Bellary helped and within six years, he grew into the 71-kg category puncher that he is today.
In 2021, in his first big international tournament, Dev went into his first ever World Championships with nothing to lose. But he went down to eventual silver medall Vadim Musaev in a 4-1 loss – one that he felt wouldn’t have happened had injury not struck him.
“My nose had broken during the tournament. The coaches would take cotton balls, dip it in Vaseline and stuff it inside my nostrils because the injury was such that if I would get punched in the area, I would start bleeding immediately. But the cotton meant that I couldn’t breathe well enough and that affected my performance later in the tournament,” said Dev.
This time around after ensuring a bronze for himself, Dev felt that he could have gone further. But in his semi-final bout against Kazakh boxer Aslanbek Shymbergenov, the results went into bout review and the observer and evaluator both went in the favour of the eventual gold medall – a decision Dev didn’t think was the correct one.
Ask him what he thinks of his Paris chances and pat comes the reply – ‘I can win gold’. He will meet his Kazakh nemesis again, likely at the Asian Games and also might be able to take on Uzbek silver medall Saidjamshid Jafarov at the same event. Despite many decent quality boxers from the USA, Great Britain and other countries boycotting the IBA-held event, he feels he has seen enough among the current crop of boxers to keep dreaming of his hand being raised when it matters the most. But next up, the Asian Games in Hangzhou in September.