Boxing World Championships: Vijender Singh ignored viral fever to win the opening round

Star boxer Vijender Singh (75kg) of India displayed a strong performance despite being suffering from viral fever to bang Hampus Henriksson of Sweden in his opening bout and entered the 2nd round of the World Championships at Almaty in Kazakhstan on Thursday.
Vijender out-punched his opponent by 3-0 to make the last 32 and rounded off a third successive victory day for India. Notably, the individual scoreline displayed 30-27 30-26 30-26 in favor of Vijender, who is targeting to make a strong return, following being tangled in a drug scandal, which declined him several weeks of training at the start of this year.
Vijender declared to the media that he is suffering from fever, cold and cough since he arrived there but somehow managed to pull himself today. He is glad that he won but it is just the beginning. He disclosed that he has been on medication for the last two days. Prior to today's bout, his coaches told him that he should not feel weak mentally no matter how he was feeling physically. Hence, he just proceeded with a positive mindset and hauled the victory.
No doubt, national coach Gurbax Singh Sandhu praised the boxer's performance too. Sandhu described that Vijender delivered an exceptional performance against a very tough boxer. In fact, the other guy was very aggressive, but Vijender clasped him with some excellent uppercuts, that broke him down. Subsequently, Viju connected with some deft left hooks.
Next, Vijender has a tough bout as he will be locking horns with European champion as well as world number seven Jason Quigley of Ireland. Actually, the 22-year-old Quigley is seeded fifth and the combo will square off on Saturday.
Vijender hopes that he will recover substantially by that time and see how it goes on.
The 27-year-old is a former world number one plus the first Indian boxer to win an Olympic bronze medal in the 2008 Beijing Games. He remarked that Henriksson was aggressive but he gathered everything inside him in the first two rounds and the strategy worked as he thrashed him down with uppercuts.
Undoubtedly, Vijender ruled all the three rounds and managed to get unanimous accolades from the judges, who were evaluating the boxers not only for the number of punches connected, but also their overall ring craft according to the new 10-point system.
Sandhu claimed with a laugh that their boys have done well under the new rules till date. Moreover, the absence of headguards has not been an issue and in fact they have done better without the headguards.