Parveen Hooda closed the hardest chapter of her career on Friday in Aichi-Nagoya, beating Paris Olympics bronze medallist Chen Nien-chin of Chinese Taipei by a split 3-2 decision to win the women’s 65kg gold at the Asian Games.
The win is India’s second boxing gold of the day, after Lovlina Borgohain’s 75kg title earlier, and the country’s 13th gold of the Games. It also makes Hooda only the third Indian woman to win an Asian Games boxing title, after MC Mary Kom in Incheon 2014 and Borgohain in Aichi-Nagoya. For the first time, two Indian women have stood on the top step of the boxing podium at the same Asian Games.
The final was a tight, judge-splitting contest against one of the division’s most decorated fighters. Chen, a Paris 2024 Olympic bronze medallist and a former world and Asian championship contender, brought big-fight experience into Nishio Gymnasium. Hooda answered with the same measured counter-punching that had carried her through the draw.
She had reached the final in dominant fashion. On Tuesday she beat China’s Li Shu 5-0 in the semifinal, after a unanimous quarterfinal win over Uzbekistan’s Navbakhor Khamidova. Those results already guaranteed India a medal and made Hooda only the third Indian woman, after Mary Kom and Borgohain, to reach an Asian Games boxing final.
The gold is also a personal reset. Hooda had finished on the podium at the previous Asian Games in Hangzhou, only for that bronze to be stripped after the International Testing Agency suspended her for 22 months over a whereabouts failure. The ban kept her out of competition for nearly two years and cost her a shot at the Paris Olympics. Friday’s split decision does not erase that record, but it replaces a lost medal with the one she came to Japan to win.
India’s boxing campaign in Aichi-Nagoya has already surpassed the four-medal return from Hangzhou, with several boxers into medal rounds and two women’s golds now confirmed. Hooda’s title sits alongside Borgohain’s as the clearest sign yet that Indian women’s boxing has moved past single breakthroughs and into a run of titles.
