Mary Kom, punching across the border

From a poor village in Northeast India ravaged by conflicts, to the bright lights of Bollywood. How Mary Kom, the legendary women’s boxing bronze medallist at the London Olympics, has floored clichés and won the day by throwing the right punches.

Standing at a metre-fifty and weighing in at 46 kilos, Mangte Chungneijang, who turned 30 last March and most commonly goes by Mary Kom (or MC Mary Kom), is a wisp of a woman who packs a hell of a punch. At the Olympic Games in London, the first to allow competitive women’s boxing, she won herself a historic bronze medal in the featherweight class, one of the discipline’s three categories.

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