Captain hook

Nishant Dev has made a smashing debut as a pro boxer. Fast, focused and fiery, he is a rare chance for India to break into this field

- Rudraneil Sengupta

In the end, it was all over in under two minutes. On 25 January, Nishant Dev, a 24-year-old boxer from Karnal in Haryana, did something only a handful of Indians have done before him—turn professional as a boxer. Signed on by one of the world's most prestigious boxing promotions—Matchroom—Dev made his debut at the towering The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, famous for its 100,000 square feet casino, against another rookie, the California boxer Alton Wiggins.

In the space of a few seconds—the time it took for Dev to judge his distance using his jab—the left-handed Indian boxer showed that he was leagues ahead of his opponent, even though this was his very first pro bout. Dev landed everything, a helpless Wiggins floored once by a right hook-left hook combination, then again by left-hook, right upper cut combination, and yet again from a blur of jabs and hooks that convinced the referee that it was pointless for the fight to go on.