'Goa's Mary Kom' came from this coastal boxing school (Sports Feature)

It's quiet at the otherwise bustling fishing jetty in coastal Chapora in north Goa. The trawlers have set out to sea for their daily catch and the cranes and crows have disappeared too as dusk sets in on a winter night.

But a few metres away, under bare tube-lights over a dozen boxers are just beginning to warm up with freehand exercises, skipping, stretching and acknowledging a familiar passionate torrent of orders, in English and some in Italian, from a ruddy faced coach.

Fabrizio Petroni, a former Italian fighter, has been training boxers at his Tiger Boxing School for the last 14 years. Having started the school and gym in the millennium year, it was here that the 30-year-old Sonia Parab, also known by her moniker 'Goa's Mary Kom', and one of the country's first women pugilists to go professional, learned her trade.

"Mary Kom, in another country, may be five years ago, would have played for a world title in professional (boxing). It's true you are an amateur champ but at the end of the day, you have to go to Las Vegas, New York, to participate in the big fight and she (Mary) had all the qualities to do so," Petroni told IANS, after a sparring bout with Sonia.

Petroni has served as head coach of the Goa boxing team and has also worked a few stints as a consultant to the Punjab Boxing Association.

His gym, from the looks of it, is functional. Blue and white walls, which appear to be fighting the heavy humidity and salinity every day, with gym equipment and of course the boxing ring, where boxers, most of them local lads, do their bit of sparring.

Sonia, who is adapting her boxing skills with a few mixed martial art skills, has already finished a bout with a sparring partner and another fighter, Nelson Paes, has stepped in. His opponent is a much heavier and muscled hunk who boxes as a professional in Italy and is a friend of Petroni. As punches fly, other boxers in the gym turn to look at the slugfest in the ring; so do neighbours and passers-by on their evening stroll.

The local community in Chapora is clearly glued in to Petroni's ring and gym. And he is aware of it.

"We are part of this place, even if we are foreigners. It's something special, especially in this particular area. What I did was I taught boxing and what I got back was community, family.

"I got people during the morning say to me 'hello coach'. My nickname is Tiger. Everywhere I go, they say 'Hi Tiger, how are you Tiger'. I feel at home. My son feels at home," Petroni, whose son is as old as his gym and was born in Goa, told IANS.

But all of it hasn't been hunky-dory for Petroni.

Perhaps it's the doughty Italian in him or his crude frankness which has landed him on the opposite end of the stick, as far as the boxing administration in Goa is concerned, a fact that Petroni regrets and has lately begun to acknowledge, after boxers who coached under him, he claims, started getting red-flagged by Goa's boxing mainstream organisations.

"A coach is not only about what you do in the ring alone (with the boxers). If my fighters are punished just because they are from here, then I am not a good coach," Petroni claims.

Compromise does not fit easy in a boxers' fighting kit. And that is one lesson India has taught him, for which, Petroni claims, he is grudgingly grateful.

"This country taught me that going ahead is not just about going straight. There is compromise which you have to manage. Adjust. Until I am not ready to bear with organisations (and officialdom), I cannot be a good coach," he says.

(Mayabhushan Nagvenkar can be contacted at mayabhushan.n@ians.in)