Pooja Dhanda (right) defeated world and Olympic champion Helen Maroulis twice in PWL.
The last one month has been nothing short of a ‘dream’ for Pooja Dhanda. She has beaten an Olympic and world champion, two world championship silver medallists and led Punjab to defend their title in Pro Wrestling League. The congratulatory messages are still coming but she is yet to reply to all of them. Not because she does not want to, but because she does not want to make a big deal of her wins.
When Dhanda beat Helen Maroulis two weeks ago, it was the biggest win of her career. She had never beaten a wrestler of her stature before. The reigning World and Olympic champ suffered only two defeats in the PWL and both came against Dhanda, who also scored wins over medallists Marwa Amri and Odunayo. Heading into the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games this year, her performance in January has made her the new face of Indian wrestling. Though Dhanda is happy with her victories, she wants to move on from here and not go overboard with her celebrations.
“To beat such accomplished wrestlers is always a happy feeling. I beat Helen twice in the league and it has been a great one month for me but the challenge lies ahead. Two Games and two big championships are coming up and they are more important for me,” Dhanda says. The 24-year-old is back on the mat for her preparations for the Asian Championship which will be held from February 28 in Kyrgyzstan. Daughter of Ajmer Singh, a tractor driver with the Haryana Animal Husbandry Centre in Hisar, Dhanda wants to achieve more after these “stepping stones.” For that, she flew to Bangalore for the routine check-up of her knee on which she suffered the ACL injury three years back. She’ll also take stock of her recovery and diet chart for the next month.
“I had the injury during training and when the surgery was completed, I still had to go through a lot of recovery because it was the second surgery. The first was unsuccessful. It is important because it still pains. I am 100 per cent and I have to consult my physio every two weeks to regain my full fitness,” she says.
Before the Pro Wrestling League, no one would have anticipated that Dhanda would give the foreign wrestlers a run for their money. After her first bout, which she lost to Amri, the Punjab team was worried about their chances of winning the league. But one man had backed Dhanda all the way.
Coach of the Punjab team Kuldeep Singh had a pep talk with Dhanda before her second bout. He’d advised her to wrestle with a free mind and think that she was the best. She didn’t lose a single bout after that. Kuldeep was the one who had asked the owners of the team to bid for Dhanda during the auction.
“Once other teams put their money on foreign wrestlers, I thought it would be better to go for the best Indian. Pooja is the sharpest wrestler in India. There is no particular move she has mastered but she is the best in technique and once she pulls off her best technique, no wrestler can survive the hold,” he says. That happened twice in the league. Most Indian women wrestlers favour the move ‘Dhak’ in which the wrestler throws the opponent over the shoulder and then try for a pin. Dhanda too got two pins against Amri and Odunayo. Her headlock was so brutal that the Nigerian wrestler Odunayo, known to pin her opponents, did not even move when she was trapped.
“Her confidence rose when she won her bout against Helen. She knew she could do it against others as well. If she wants to succeed against more wrestlers at the international level, she needs to work more on her footwork. I know she has an injury but she has to work hard. Some more upper body strength will make her a very good wrestler,” the coach says. Even Dhanda knows she has to improve and for that she has returned to the national camp in Lucknow, which begins on Tuesday.
“I think the girls in Lucknow are very good. I will train with Olympic medallist Sakshi and others like Sarita Mor so I will try to develop myself. During the league, training with foreign wrestlers was unique. They had some different ways to improve my technique, they helped me in a couple of leg movements which I was doing wrong. Now I have to improve more and I have trained with the girls in Lucknow and reached here so I think I can continue with them,” she adds.
Dhanda will represent India at CWG in April and she is confident she of winning gold. She beat Geeta Phogat in the trials of 57kg to secure the berth. Now, she knows the responsibility she shoulders.