‘Purana Bajrang waapas aa gaya hai’ declares Punia ahead of Asian Games title defense | Asian-games News

Bajrang Punia watched in half shock, half bewilderment as the needle of the weigh scale started over 60, whizzed past 70, and touched 75 before finally stopping at 74.“I had never been this heavy in my life!” says the four-time World Championship medall, thrice in the 65kg division and in 61kg a decade back in 2013.
Hitting 74kg on the weighing scales was the start of what Bajrang describes as the ‘most difficult’ period of his career. He laughs about it now, returning to full fitness after weeks of ‘unimaginable training’ and the ‘rock-solid support and assurance’ from Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik.
But at that moment, he went ‘numb’.
It was mid-June, a few days after the wrestler – along with Vinesh and Sakshi – negotiated an exit plan with the government following months of protests on the streets of Delhi.

The Asian Games became the top priority for the reigning gold medall. But before even thinking about getting on the flight to Hangzhou, Bajrang had to negotiate with the physical demands of his profession – starting with cutting nearly 10 kilos to remain eligible to fight in the 65 kg weight class.
Overweight, and under-trained, Bajrang would soon realise that shedding kilos and returning to practice was the easier bit. Doing so while simultaneously continuing their battle against Wrestling Federation of India president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, fighting court cases and selection controversies, and dealing with the vicious, vile world on social media, was not.
And just as he found a way to deal with all that, he saw his friend and fellow wrestler Vinesh’s body break down. “She was under so much stress that eventually, she had to undergo a serious surgery. There was so much pressure on her while she was training that it led to an injury. So that was also on my mind,” Bajrang tells The Indian Express.
There was never a time, however, when he thought of giving up. At least initially, which he says were some of the ‘toughest days’ of his career.
For all practical reasons, Bajrang had been away from wrestling for the whole of 2023 until he returned to the mat in mid-June. It’s the longest Bajrang, 29, stayed away from the sport since he started practising it as a seven-year-old.
From wrestling in the mud pits across Haryana, Bajrang rose to become one of India’s fiercest wrestlers who earned the nickname ‘The Tank’ within the fraternity, a reference to his strength and stamina. But when he made a comeback, Bajrang realised both his allies had abandoned him.
His sparring partners who could not get close to him before were now bossing him (“maan lo utha utha k maar rahe the”).
“My fitness and wrestling movement were severely affected,” he says. “Physical fitness is not an issue – we can regain fitness in three weeks or a month. But the movements on the mat are crucial. Our opponents were training daily. So I aimed to get my movements back to the same level as last year when I last played.”
Getting back in shape
It’s commonly held in sport that it can take up to three months to cover for one week of training lost. In Bajrang’s case, it was months of practice missed. “So I didn’t have the luxury of falling back on my tried-and-tested routine,” he says.
His usual methods were gruelling enough but Bajrang went a step further to return to shape. He didn’t cut down on diet – even while protesting, he didn’t lose his dietary discipline – but the training sessions became harder than ever.

*You don’t need a sunrise to start over.**you just need a new mindset.* pic.twitter.com/SVOieQ9rVr
— Bajrang Punia 🇮🇳 (@BajrangPunia) September 9, 2023
“My day started at around 6 or so in the morning, trained for two hours, got some rest and recovery after that and in the evening I was back again,” he says.
He moved to Kyrgyzstan for better sparing but also to cut off from all the noise back home. “There,” he says, “I increased my mat sessions to around eight per week, more than the five or six I did earlier.”
But if he thought leaving the country would mean peace of mind and focused training, Bajrang was maken. He says the biggest challenge of his comeback bid was to deal with the trolls, who sent him hundreds of messages daily.
At first, he says, the messages were confined only to the allegations of sexual harassment the six women wrestlers had levelled against Brij Bhushan. Then, after the ad-hoc committee managing wrestling’s team selection exempted him from competing in the trials for the Asian Games, he got targeted relentlessly for that as well.
“The paid trolls are still working against us. They aren’t sitting peacefully even now. These are the kind of people who, for Rs 2, will say anything even against their own family,” Bajrang says. “Even Khap Panchayat said the decision was taken ad hoc committee and not Bajrang. And Bajrang won a court case since he was right, the decision came in his favour.”
“But there are people in society who’ll do anything for money and they are still against us. Daily, I received 50-100 messages. I was fighting for the truth. People who abused Brij Bhushan, who couldn’t even look him in the eye were questioning us.”

*बदलाव से डरे नहीं। भले ही कुछ अच्छा खो सकते हैं लेकिन कुछ बेहतर पा भी सकते हैं।* 🙏🏽 pic.twitter.com/MIXsFndhi0
— Bajrang Punia 🇮🇳 (@BajrangPunia) September 5, 2023
The abuses were ‘upsetting’ and the news of Vinesh’s injury, which ruled her out of the Asian Games, broke his heart as well as served as a warning sign. “We were pushing ourselves but in doing so, there was also a risk of injury since we were returning from such a long break and weren’t strong physically and mentally,” he says.Most Read
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After she got injured, Vinesh and Sakshi got together and put their weight behind Bajrang. “With the Asian Games approaching, they have told me, bhaiya aap training karo, federation aur Brij Bhushan ka mudda hum dekh lenge (‘brother, you focus on training, we will handle the issues related to the federation and Brij Bhushan’),” he says. “Mentally, I am free now because they are there to take care of those things, my coach is planning my training and the physio is taking care of my fitness.”

The ‘teamwork’, Bajrang says, has helped him find his mojo just in time for the Asian Games. He noticed his speed and reaction time on the mat improved, he timed his counterattacks a lot better, defended strongly and was able to launch attacks of his own.
“I don’t think there’s any issue with my speed and stamina. I’ll know better when I compete; this will be my first competition since the 2022 Worlds (where he won bronze). But if I was at 50 per cent when I started training after protests, I am at 90-95 per cent now,” he says. “Purana Bajrang wapas aa gaya hai.”