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New tournament hopes to give shot in the arm to arm wrestling

First of its kind team-based Ultimate Panja League to kick off today in Mumbai

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Samata Sonawane and Khushnoor Jijina
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There’s a new entrant in the fast-growing world of sporting leagues in India – arm wrestling.

On Friday evening, a Mumbai bar will play hosts to the Ultimate Panja League (UPL), a novel first of its kind team-based arm wrestling competition.

The brainchild of Prashant Kumar — who runs a sports promotion company UPL — will kick off with six teams comprising seven players each, with one female arm wrestler in every team. The matches will be held across different weight categories. 

The league has no sponsors yet, and Friday will majorly be about testing the waters as far as arm wrestling’s popularity potential is concerned. 

But why arm wrestling?

“Because I used to arm wrestle a lot in school and college, and was really passionate about it,” Kumar said.

“In India, no one has paid attention to the sport, and there is massive potential to grow it. A lot of people in India are interested in arm wrestling, and I feel that it can catch on to the masses,” he added.Kumar said he understands the major setback about arm wrestling as a marketable sport — a single match can be over within a matter of seconds. And that’s why he came up with a team-based league concept.

“The Indian audience is tuned to the concept of a league. It’s become a trend now. And for a sport like arm wrestling, random matches wouldn’t make sense. So I thought why not come up with a concept of teams so that people can also build a connect with it over the period of time,” Kumar said.

Kumar then brought together a bunch of MMA professionals and arm wrestling enthusiasts to build the teams.  The captain of the Mumbai Panjas team, Khushnoor Jijina, is a 37-year-old personal fitness trainer. A former national judo champion, Jijina lapped up to the thought of arm wrestling professionally when the offer came about.    

“I used to arm wrestle in gymkhanas earlier. And since I’m into judo, I have strong base. I still arm wrestle whenever I get the chance. So, when I was asked about taking part in it, I was so excited,” he said.

The Mumbai-based Jijina believes there are a lot of good arm wrestlers across the country, and a league like this will only help in tapping the hidden talent.

“I am a Parsi, and our community organises a lot of arm wrestling championships in clubs. And I can tell you that there are a lot of good arm wrestlers in India,” he said.

Samata Sonawane is the female representative in the Mumbai franchise. She does MMA professionally, and saw this as an opportunity to venture into something different.

“My family is very excited, because they haven’t seen anything like this before,” she said.

“I didn’t have a lot of family support when I started, but now that I have done well for myself in MMA, they are fine. Now they don’t care if I do MMA or arm wrestling, they are just happy that I have achieved something in life.

“I hope this grows and we play lots of matches and it comes on TV some day,” she added.

Kumar acknowledges there will be quite some time and challenges to overcome before that can happen, but he is willing to bide his time.

“I’m just putting the concept in the market now, and people have shown some interest in buying the teams. But the intention right now is to build the sport,” he said.

And for that, he is planning to have the league running throughout the year, as opposed to all other leagues in the country that run for a specific time period. 

“We are trying to build a new sport, and we cannot afford to lose the attention of people in it. We want to constantly bang it into the minds of the people,” he said.

For now, Mumbai and Pune will play hosts for the first season, before he takes it to the other centres across the country.

“We are also trying to see the response, because no one has done anything like this before. But I’m pretty sure it will be fantastic. Whoever I’ve spoken to about this seemed excited about it,” he said.

ABOUT ULTIMATE PANJA LEAGUE

  • Teams: Mumbai, Pune, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and UP
  • Players: 7 in each team (6 male and 1 female)
  • Curtain raiser: April 5, Raasta, Mumbai; 7.30pm
  • The league is affiliated to World Armwrestling Federation, and will follow international rules and guidelines
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