From that day onwards, Dhesi never looked back. As a youth amateur, she collected three national titles, a European silver medal and three international crowns.<\/p>\n
But it was never just about accolades. Dhesi wanted to break stereotypes by making the move into professional boxing.<\/p>\n
However, turning pro brought new challenges and a fresh spotlight, particularly from within her own community.<\/p>\n
“I was asked ‘What if you get hurt, who will marry you?’, ‘Shouldn’t you be in the kitchen?’ – stuff like that, it was quite negative – and even, ‘What’s your plan B?’. <\/p>\n
“But my plan A is boxing and my plan B is boxing,” she says.<\/p>\n
In May, Dhesi answered those questions with her fists when she made an immediate impact on her pro debut, winning by knockout. The clip went viral and so did her story.<\/p>\n
“All of a sudden, the same people who were doubting my potential were praising me for making the Punjabi and Sikh communities proud,” she adds.<\/p>\n
“These people don’t want to know you when you’re working your way up but now they’re, like, straight up on me. They’ve realised I put on a show and it’s no joke. Boxing is my life.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From that day onwards, Dhesi never looked back. As a youth amateur, she collected three national titles, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-95984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}