Has there ever been a world champion pro boxer from India and/or of Indian ancestry?

India has a long tradition of homegrown wrestling, and I've seen a lot of martial artists and callisthenics and training fanatics favouring strength and endurances exercises of this "Hindu wrestling" and Pehlwani wrestling - Indian squats, burpees, mace-swinging. etc.

So it's not like all "combat sports" are excluded from Indian culture. It seems that India has one of the most ancient and large traditions of grappling/wrestling arts/sport.

 

Only some minor successes in the Amateur ranks. looking foreward to seeing some Indian fighters in the professional ranks.

 

This :good

However, I have read that the sport is developing in India. As someone mentioned there was an Indian Olympic bronze medallist in India and that has really helped raise the profile of the sport in the country though it is still some way behind cricket which is MASSIVE over there.

 

I don't recall any Indian male boxer ever winning a world title in the pro ranks.
Heard that India will host one of the World Series of Boxing teams, so it should be interesting to see how/if the infrastructure and funding will change. And whether they will produce any notable fighters in the future.

From what I have read the problem with India is with the funding for most sports it is still rife with corruption. If you look at most the sports besides Cricket, most have some kind of government subdivision in charge of their funding where people are appointed to run it by higher up civil servants or elected officials. This turns off a lot of the international sports organizations funding development.
For instance in football FIFA has for many years held back funding to develop the game in India because the Indian FA (it is actually named something else) is essentially a wing of the government. FIFA has a strict policy of no government interference or involvment in the running of the national governing body of the sport. The problem is the civil servants running these organizations are very reluctant to give up pressure or lobby for independent organizations as a lot of them are taking a slice of the government money that they get and are stuffing their coffers, which leaves very little for infrastructure and development.

I am sure the same is true of other organizations like the International Olympic Committee.

 

When ever I have seen a group of Indian Men together, I do not see any of them being able boxers. They do not stike me to being able to compete in boxing.

 

Amir Khan. He's from Pakistani decent right? Which means Indian ancestry since Pakistan = India before partition.

 

:-(
They said the same about black people being able to compete.

Anyone can compete if dedicated, mentally strong, and gifted. Where you come from doesn't matter.

 

I was only talking about Indians not blacks in general. African's are great at sport, Islanders are good at sports, Rugby etc...

Out of all the Indian's I have meet and went to school/work with none were fighters, almost none were good at sport. Sport must not be in their culture or some thing.

 

Gesta, you have fallen into the trap of "illicit generalisation". India not only has a huge pupulation but also has such a huge variety of people that it is really astounding. People of almost every ethnicity (race) and religion speaking a wide array of languages and with distinct cutures can be found here.

Faisal is right when he said that almost all Indians believe that the way out of poverty is to get an education or, I would like to add, at least to learn some trade. In this regard, sports is hardly in the picture unless you are a very promising cricket player. But some Indians do believe that you can use sport to get a good job (both in the public as well as private sector), which is true to some extent.

But Faisal is way off the mark when he says that Indians look down upon combat sports. As Unforgiven has very rightly pointed out, wrestling (Indian style or "Pehlwani" or "Kushti" as it is known here) is India's ancient sport and it is still very popular in the rural areas. Surprisingly, the better among these wrestlers or "pehlwans" make decent money which may be a cause for their reluctance to devote themselves to Olympic Freestyle or Greco-roman wrestling.

For those familiar with the annals of wrestling history, "The Great Gama" (Ghulam Mohammed) was one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. Many consider him to be the best of all time. He never lost a match in his life. In that era there were numerous others like the original Ghulam, Imam Bux (Gama's brother), Ahmed Bux, Ghulam Mohiuddin, Rahim Sultaniwala, Gunga Brahmin, etc. Interestingly, most of these men were from that region in India which would now fall in Pakistan. But the point is there was no Pakistan then. Which should say something about Amir Khan having Indian ancestry or not.

Later on, for whatever it is worth, Dara Singh went on to make a name for himself in "entertainment wrestling". Presently, "The Great Khali" of WWE fame is an Indian.

The Chinese, Japanese and other far easterners will readily tell you that their famous martial arts like Kung-fu, Karate, Jiu-jitsu, Tae-kwon-do, etc had their origins in India. In fact, a system of martial arts which may have been the 'mother of them all' still survives in the state of Kerala in south India. It is called Kalarippayattu. I am sure that Gesta will quickly change his mind about Indian men being unable to take up boxing if he were to see one of the practitioners of Kalarippayattu.

And finally, one of the most popular strength, combat and fitness training system now popualr in the USA - Combat Conditioning by Matt Furey - is nothing but a rehash of the training system of the old time wrestlers mentioned above. The basic exercises offered in his system is familiar to any school boy in India.

 

From modern day India, rules Khan out.

 

Ancestry,dude. Ancestry....

 

There has never been one yet with ancestory worth mentioning, as Clyde said Khan is as close as you can find without putting yourself out.

Here is a future champion though and a man I would pick to beat Haye maybe, undefeated in 20 fights so far and undoubtably the best P4P fighter in India's history.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Mgt4UsFv0[/ame]

Gurcharan Singh.