Frank Warren Has High Expectations For Vijender Singh

By Frank Warren

Vijender Singh learned a bit about political in-fighting when he was invited to meet Keith Vaz MP at the House of Commons this week.

Labour MP Vaz, who is hugely influential within the British Asian community, is a massive supporter of the Indian Olympic Bronze medallist and called upon British Indians around the country to get behind Singh’s career in the pro ranks.

Singh, a superstar in his native India, and their first ever Olympic games boxing medallist, ironically has been yet to be politically honoured in his homeland, although Mr. Vaz suggested he would set about changing that by putting in a good word with his high ranking Indian government contacts.

I feel Singh is someone who can give birth to prominence of boxing in a nation which is currently a sleeping giant in the sport. His first fight was seen by around 100 million people in India, and he was the number one Twitter trending term in a nation of a billion people on fight night.

Interestingly Singh was wished good luck publicly for his pro debut by a ‘who’s who’ of Bollywood stars. One of which Salman Khan I’m told is India’s equivalent to Brad Pitt and was the ranked as 7th highest paid actor in the world this year by Forbes Magazine.

In addition to having many high profile fans, Singh is also a social media heavyweight and has 1.3 million Facebook followers on his page which shows his huge fan base in his homeland.

The only recently active boxers with a higher number of Facebook followers are all multiple occasion world champions and global stars (Mayweather, Pacquiao, Khan and Klitschko). Though Singh has more Facebook followers than Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez, a national icon in Mexico, who has 1.1 million.

Singh’s popularity can no doubt do wonders towards growing boxing in a country whose sporting landscape is dominated by Cricket. Much like Zou Shimming in China, in Singh we have a ready-made star to build the sport off the back of.

If he can reach the same lofty heights in the pro game as he did in the amateurs it could give birth to a whole new market there for live events and television and give other young stars from a country with a strong amateur boxing programme the chance to forge a career in the sport.

The bouts involving Singh and WBO European super-middleweight champion Jamie Cox have been switched from Harrow this week to the National Stadium in Dublin on Saturday week.

Their opponents remain the same, with Cox making the first defence of his title against Hungarian Ferenc Albert whilst the multi-gonged Singh, follows up his explosive pro debut earlier this month with his second professional fight against 2-0 prospect Dean Gillen

This is also a show crammed with rising talent. Promoted in association with MGM Promotions, it features Irish favourite Jamie Conlan defending his WBO Intercontinental super-flyweight title.