Mary Kom (professional woman boxer from India)

Biography:

Birthday: 1st March, 1983

Father's name: Mangte Tonpa Kom

Mother's name: Mangte Akham Kom

Born In: Kangathei, Manipur, India

Nationality: Indian

Introduction:

Mary Kom is a professional woman boxer from India, who has appeared in many boxing sports events like Olympics and commonwealth games.

Coming from a low-income family, her father and mother worked in Jhum farms. Her father had somewhat interest in wrestling and boxing, and that also assisted Mary in shaping her destiny and life for boxing. 

Apart from boxing, Mary Kom is also a member of the Indian parliament, in Rajya Sabha. She is also nicknamed as magnificent Mary for her incredible contributions in representing and benchmarking the Indian sports and athletism in front of the world.

An unfortunate incident that totally turned Mary's life was the time when she was traveling from Bangalore to Delhi. During her travel, all her luggage was stolen. In New Delhi, she met Karung Onkholer. Karung was a football player and also the president of the northeast student body. When he got to know that Mary Kom has lost her luggage and got it stolen, he came up and helped her a lot with this matter. Later on, both of them started dating and finally married in the year 2005.

Early Life and Commencement of Career:

Mary Kom was brought up in humble surroundings, helping and assisting her parents with farm-related tasks, going to school, and learning and training athletics initially and later on boxing simultaneously. Kom's father was a keen wrestler in his youth time. Mary Kom had two other siblings, a sister, and a brother. She was eldest among all three of them.

Kom used to go to the Loktak Christian Model High School at Moirang until she completed and her sixth grade. Later, she went to attend St. Xavier Catholic School, till the 8th grade. This school was also located in Moirang. During her time in St. Xavier Catholic School, she took a decent amount of interest in different athletic games, especially javelin and 400 meters running. Precisely at this period, Dingko Singh, who was a fellow Manipuri, came back from the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games with a gold medal. This moment, according to Mary Kom, inspired many youngsters in Manipur to go and try for boxing, and not to mention, she was also part of those youngsters.

After finishing her 8th grade, Kom shifted to Adimjati High School, Imphal, to complete her 9th and 10th grade, but she failed to make up the matriculation exam. In order to avoid repeating them, she decided to quit her school, and this time, she gave her examination from NIOS, Imphal, and finally completed her graduation from Churachandpur College.

In her school, Kom used to participate in all types of sports, including volleyball, football, and athletics. As mentioned earlier, the success of Dingko Singh was something that sparked her to turnabout from athletics to boxing in the year 2000. She commenced her training under her first coach K. Kosana Meitei in Imphal. When she was at the age of 15 years, she left her hometown to study and train at the Sports Academy in the state capital Imphal. In an interview with the BBC, she revealed about her past, where she was a dedicated, hardworking girl with a high will power, who learned and implemented the basics of boxing instantly. 

After that, at Khuman Lampak, Imphal, she trained and practiced under the Manipur State Boxing Coach, who was Narjit Singh. Kom had not informed about her interest in boxing to anyone in the family and carried it as a secret from her father, who was himself a wrestler of his time. Despite that fact, her father was always worried that boxing would hurt Kom's face and its structure and disgrace her chances of marriage. However, things turned around, and he was pleased when he saw Kom's photo appeared in a newspaper after she won the state boxing championship in the year 2000. Later, after three years, her father started to support Kom's ideals and dreams in boxing as he was finally fully convinced of her love of boxing.

Career:

Right after her marriage, Mary Kom took a short pause from boxing. After she and Ongler had their first two children, Kom restarted her training sessions. In the year 2008, she received a silver medal at the 2008 Asian Women's Boxing Championship in India and also the fourth consecutive gold medal at the AIBA Women's World Boxing Championship in China. This process didn't stop here as she also received a gold medal at the 2009 Asian Indoor Games that were held in Vietnam. 

On 3rd October 2010, during the commencement of Common Wealth games, along with Sanjay and Harshit Jain, she received the honor of carrying the Queen's Baton in its opening ceremony run in the stadium for the 2010 Commonwealth Games that were held in Delhi. Though, she was unable to compete in this contest, as women's boxing was not included in the Commonwealth Games. 

On 1st October 2014, she acquired her first Gold Medal at the Asian Games held at Incheon, South Korea, by beating Kazakhstan's Zhaina Shekerbekova in the 51 kg flyweight summit clash. On 8th November 2017, she gripped her fifth gold medal in the 48 kg at the ASBC Asian Confederation women's boxing championships, which occurred at Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. On 24th November 2018, she made history by becoming the first woman to win 6 World Championships. She achieved this world record at the 10th AIBA Women's World Boxing Championships, which took place in New Delhi, India.

In October 2019, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) titled her as one of the female representatives of boxing's athlete ambassadors group for the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Achievements:

She received gold silver or bronze medals in each of the following events:

• She became seven times AIBA World Champion in the year 2018.
• She won Witch Cup in the year 2002.
• She is the six-time winner of the Asian Women Championship.
• She won the women's world cup in the year 2004.
• She won the Venus Women's Box Cup in the year 2006.
• She won the gold medal at commonwealth games in the year 2018.