Parveen Hooda

Some Lesser Known Facts About Parveen Hooda

• Parveen Hooda is an Indian boxer, who secured a place in the 2024 Paris Olympics after winning a Bronze medal in the women’s 57 Kg semifinal boxing match at the 19th Asian Games in 2023.

• During her school years, she got interested in boxing. In 2011, upon hearing a town crier’s announcement about the launch of a boxing academy in her village, Rurki, near Rohtak, established by Sarpanch Sudhir Hooda, she asked her father to enrol her in the academy as the academy didn’t charge any fees for its trainees.

  

• She became more determined to make her career in boxing after watching Vijender Singh and Mary Kom‘s historic bronze wins at the Olympics on television.

• In 2016, she won a match against Vilma Viitanen at the Nations Cup Junior held in Ruma.

• In 2017, she reached the finals of the Ahmet Comert Youth Tournament; however, she lost the match.

• At the 6th Elite Women’s National Boxing Championships 2022, she won her bout against Mannu Nimawat.

• During an interview, she shared that at the beginning of her boxing career, her father opposed her decision to pursue boxing as a profession; however, her mother was always her supporter. She also revealed that she could not purchase boxing gloves due to her financially unstable family background; her coach Sudhir Hooda bought new gloves and shoes for her. She said,
  

  My family isn’t well-to-do. We have only a little land which is barren and my father is a heart patient and cannot work. We have one buffalo whose milk we sell. It was difficult for my mother to raise our family with that money. But she always made sure to support me. Sudhir sir helped me like a father. He bought gloves and shoes and also made sure I got a good diet.” ^[2]ESPN

• In 2023, she participated in the 19th Asian Games and faced a defeat in the women’s 57kg semifinal match against two-time world champion Lin Yu-ting, a Taiwanese boxer.

  

• In an interview, she mentioned that if she hadn’t become a boxer, she would have studied to become a DSP in the Indian police force. ^[3]YouTube – Sansad TV

• She is also a police officer in the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). In December 2022, ITBP promoted her to Head Constable.