26 years after his father gave up boxing, Vishvanath wins Asian championships gold

On Friday morning, just like on every other workday, Suresh Babu sat on his sewing machine in his small tailoring shop in Chennai’s Perambur. His mind, he will say later, wasn’t in his work. He nervously waits for a call.

His phone rings around 11am. On the other end was his son Vishvanath, calling from Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. The call is a short one but it’s exactly what Suresh was hoping to hear.

“ Jaichtein (I’ve won)”

Just minutes before, competing in the final of the men’s 50kg division at the Asian boxing championships, Vishvanath has beaten Japan’s Daichi Iwai by a comprehensive 5-0 unanimous decision. He’s the only boxer from the Indian men’s team to win gold at the continental championships. Suresh hasn’t been able to watch the bouts since the competition isn’t being broadcast but his son’s words are more than enough for now.

When he hears them, Suresh says he blinks back tears. “Four years back, Vishvanath called me after he won gold at the Asian Youth Championships. I cried then. I thought I wouldn’t cry again but I did,” he tells Sportstar.

The tears flowed for the same reason.

“It was a very emotional moment for me. Everything I had dreamed of, Vishvanath was achieving. All the ambitions I had, my son is fulfilling,” says Suresh. The call with his son is a short one. Vishvanath has to stand on the podium and pose for pictures with various dignitaries. Suresh Babu returns to working on the women’s suit he’s completing.

Suresh doesn’t mind.

Suresh had been a boxer himself – a talented one at that. He’d won multiple state titles and subsequently a silver medal at the sub-junior nationals in 1995. Just three years later though, he would hang up his gloves.

“I loved boxing. But there was no money in the sport. I was from a very poor family. I was the eldest and had four sisters to marry off. I could either choose to chase the sport or I could take care of my family. I had to put my dreams to one side. That’s how I got into tailoring,” he says.

Suresh never forgot his first passion, however. Once his work day ends, he says he still shadow boxes to remind himself of the old days. But he wanted more for his son. When Vishvanath was 11, he started training him. Vishvanath hated it at first. “ Who likes to get punched?” Vishvanath once told Sportstar.

But Suresh persisted. He’d tell his son stories of the great fighters of yore and tell him he could become like them too. Slowly Vishvanath’s perspective changed. “The more I practised the more I enjoyed boxing too,” recalls Vishvanath.

But although Suresh had planted the seed, he realised soon enough he wasn’t going to be able to develop his son the way he wanted. “I had a full time job and money wasn’t easy. I would train him whenever I could. I’d give him some coaching in the morning and then once I got back from work. But if I had a lot of work or I got a late order then I’d be able to train him really late,” he says.

While Chennai had a few boxing clubs, Suresh understood his son needed a specialised training environment. The duo would twice travel to Bangalore for trials at the boys sports company in the MEG (Madras Engineer Group) and be rejected on both occasions due to Vishvanath’s small build, which coaches would later say was due to poor nutrition.

The rejection discouraged him. “I didn’t want to continue boxing and I told my father that I was always going to be rejected. But he kept pushing me to make one more attempt,” says Vishvanath.

Vishvanath with his father, Suresh Babu, right. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

In 2018, Suresh took one final chance, taking his son to the Army Sports Institute trial in Pune. It wasn’t an easy choice to make. “I didn’t know anything about Pune. The trial was a week long, so I had to shut the shop and take a small loan to pay for our travel and stay in Pune and also to support the rest of the family in Chennai. But it was an easy decision to make,” says Suresh.

When they reached Pune, Vishvanath found himself competing with several hundred other applicants. This time though he wasn’t immediately rejected for his stature. Technique honed by his father finally paid off. He got the better of multiple opponents, impressed the coaches and was selected to the ASI.

While at the ASI, Vishvanath grew 21 cm. He stands five feet and two inches now, while adding a lot more muscle. His physical development had finally caught up with his technical skills.

Over the years, Vishvanath has proved his worth as one of India’s most promising young boxers. He won gold at the 2019 Asian Junior championships and a silver at the Asian Youth Championships two years later. A gold was won at the 2022 Asian Youth Championships. This year he made a mark at the National Championships, winning his first gold medal in the senior ranks.

Making his senior debut for India at the Asian Championships Suresh, now a havaldar in the Indian army, wouldn’t have a near flawless performance. He won every one of his fight by unanimous decision and even dropped the reigning world champion Sanzhar Tashkenbay of Kazakhstan to the canvas to reach the semifinals.

It’s the knockdown of Tashkenbay that makes Suresh Babu particularly happy. “Vishvanath is a very aggressive boxer and I was the exact same way. But he has really good foot movement that’s much better than I had!” he says.

But Suresh hopes Vishvanath improves even further. Vishvanath currently competes in the men’s 50kg category which isn’t an Olympic weight division and that’s where his father eventually hopes he will compete in. “Right now my son is fulfilling all my dreams as a boxer. But it’s my dream to hear the national anthem play at the Olympics. I really hope he fulfills that also,” he says.

Published on Apr 10, 2026

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