Ankush Panghal wins boxing gold in men's 80 kg at Asian Games 2026
Ankush Panghal beat South Korea's Kim Minsang 4-0 in the final, India's 14th gold of the Asian Games 2026, and the first by an Indian male boxer since 2018.
Indian boxer Ankush Panghal won the gold medal in the men's 80 kg final at the Asian Games 2026, creating history with the victory. Friday turned into a "Golden Friday" for India, as the country won gold medals in boxing one after another.
In the final, Panghal beat South Korea's Kim Minsang 4-0. It was India's 14th gold at the Asian Games 2026. Exactly a minute later, Sujeet won India's 15th gold in wrestling.
The 26-year-old Panghal won the final against the Korean in a one-sided contest. In the semi-final he had fallen behind earlier, but then beat Uzbekistan's Fazliddin Erkinboev 4-1. Erkinboev is the reigning world champion in the 75 kg category.
Panghal is the first Indian male boxer to win a gold medal at the Games since 2018. Before him, Amit Panghal was the last to win a boxing medal, in 2018.
Ankush is from Hisar in Haryana. He was born on 13 August 2005 into a farming family. His father was a kabaddi player and Ankush also played kabaddi at first. He won a district-level gold in kabaddi, but his father asked him to build a career in boxing.
Ankush took up boxing at the age of 11. For training he had to travel 15 km from his village, and his father would drop him off and pick him up. He is said to have wanted to quit boxing after losing the final of the 2018 state championship, but his father did not let him. It would therefore not be wrong to say that his father has put in equal effort into the gold medal Ankush won at the Asian Games today.
