Family search for tickets as Paramjeet makes final

Published>Tue, Oct 12 10 08:37 AM

For two days now, Paramjeet Samota's relatives and cousins have been waiting outside the Talkatora Stadium, trying to get tickets to watch any of the boxer's bouts. As the 21-year-old native of Danaud, a village near Bhiwani, kept on advancing further in the super heavyweight category, his cousins efforts to somehow get a ticket becomes more frantic. Indian boxers in the heavyweight category generally find it tougher than those in the lighter categories, and as one of his younger cousins explained on Sunday night ? "semi-finals to aur mushkil hota hai. Agar haar gaya toh, hum kabh dekhenge uska fight. Monday ko uska fight dekhna hai. (Semifinals are even tougher. If he looses on Monday, then when will we watch him fight. We have to see his fight on Monday.)". On Monday, even as most of the Indian boxers bowed out of the semi-finals, Samota put the doubts of his cousins at rest and gave them another day to arrange for a ticket with a 6-2 final win over Tonga's Junior Fa and stayed on course to better heavy-weight boxer Harpreet Singh's silver medal in the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

"After every bout, my family has called me and told me to win one more match. They still have not got the tickets to watch me but I hope they will get the tickets to watch me in the final on Wednesday. We all were disappointed after Vijender's loss and I was eager to overcome the disappointment," said Samota, who will now face Tariq Haqq Abdul of Trinidad in the Super Heavy-weight final on Wednesday. The final will once again be a tough fight considering Abdul is coming of a victory over the highly rated Joseph Parker of New Zealand.

Earlier this year in March, Samota became the first Indian in the heavier weight categories to win a gold medal in the CW Boxing Championship and if the boxer wins the gold on Wednesday, he will become the first Indian boxer to win a gold medal in the Super Heavyweight category for India in CWG. "A lot of people had said the medal in Commonwealth Boxing came as most of the top boxers did not make an appearance. But I guess my performance has silenced those critics. There's still one more bout to go for me and I am expecting nothing less than a gold."

Source: Web Search