Manoj Kumar qualifies for the World Boxing Championships

Manoj Kumar is the fifth Indian boxer to qualify for the World Championships

Indian boxer Manoj Kumar (64 Kg) has made the cut to the World Boxing Championships which is scheduled to be held in Doha between October 5th and 15th.

Congrats to our boxer Manoj Kumar on qualifying for the World Champoionships.....

— Anglian Medal Hunt (@amedalhunt) September 7, 2015

The 29-year-old joins the likes of Devendro Singh, Shiva Thapa, Satish Kumar and Vikas Krishan to have booked a berth at the Worlds. While Devendro and Thapa settled for the bronze medal, Krishan reached the final of the competition where he was beaten by Bektimer Melikuziev of Uzbekistan 2:0.

Manoj has earlier won two bronze medals at the 2007 and 2013 Asian Championships in the Light Welterweight category and also won the Gold at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in the same event.

Interestingly, Manoj Kumar qualified for the Worlds because the opponent he lost to in the quarterfinal, second-seeded Kazakh Samat Bashenov, made it to the final of the Asian Boxing Championships. Madan Lal (52 Kg), a former national champion, also made it to the World Championships in similar fashion as the boxer who bested him in the quarterfinal, second seed Shakhobidin Zoirov of Uzbekistan, also punched his way to the final. Lal beat Iraq's Murtadha Al-Sudani in his pre-quarterfinal bout 3-0 in what was an unexciting bout, except for the Indian boxer’s occassional offense, which sufficed to give him the edge.

Manoj Kumar, however, was the aggressor in his match against Nepal’s Deepak Shrestha. Kumar dictated the pace of the bout and hounded Shrestha with left hooks and uppercuts to register a very convincing 3-0 win. The Nepali unsuccessfully tried to evade the Indian’s volleys and seemed very low on confidence.

With Kumar and Lal, the total number of Indians to qualify for the World Championships in Doha next month, are 6. The other four are L Devendro Singh (49kg), Shiva Thapa (56kg), Vikas Krishan (75kg) and Satish Kumar (91 Kg). Singh, Satish and Thapa managed bronze medals while Krishan secured the lone silver for India.

The World Championships are important because they are the first qualifying event for the 2016 Olympics in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. What is disheartening for the boxers is that neither the Indian flag nor the anthem were played at the Asian Championships due to the quandary about the Indian Boxing Federation being suspended by the AIBA due to internal issues.