Zinnat Ferdous: “Boxing makes me a more driven and disciplined person.”

Zinnat Ferdous: “Boxing makes me a more driven and disciplined person.”

I’m a little too old to understand how algorithms work. Actually, that’s a lie; I am way too old. But occasionally they do throw up some rare gems. The story of Zinnat Ferdous is one such gem.

Last month, those pesky algorithms led me to Ferdous. A couple of articles popped up on my timeline. The 32-year-old was competing in the recent Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Ferdous had lost her opening bout to
Caitlin Fryers. Despite the setback, Ferdous has fond memories of her Glasgow experience.

“It was phenomenal,” Ferdous told FightPost. “I could never have dreamed of being an athlete at this stage of my life. Being on stage with some of the best athletes in the world. The future Olympians. The future professional boxing stars. Sharing the same space with them. Seeing how they do things. Being in the same room with them, it’s a kind of spirit that is hard to find unless you are in it and doing what they do. It made me feel so proud that I am able to be in that space with them.”

“The event itself was organised very well,” Ferdous added. “It was supposed to be held in Australia, and then it got downsized. But even with all that, there was that sense that we are here at the Commonwealth Games, and it means a lot to those nations. They viewed it as an opportunity. And you felt that. But there was a competitive nature. Everybody was there to win. My first big international event was the Asian Games; that felt a bit friendlier. Everyone was in Glasgow to win, which is all good. We are in boxing, right?”

Ferdous lost on points to the vastly more experienced Fryers. There is no disgrace in losing to someone with the pedigree of her opponent. It was a reflective Ferdous I found a few weeks after the fight.

“I’ve taken a long time to reflect on it,” Ferdous told me. “I trained very hard for it. But I just don’t think the best version of me came out. I spar and fight a lot of girls like Caitlin. The taller, longer fighter. I just didn’t do what I was supposed to do. My regular coach came over, but he couldn’t be in my corner. But he was shouting out instructions, and as the fight went on, you could hear the disappointment and a sense of rage in his voice. You know what to do. Why are you not doing it? What comes with experience is being able to balance pressure and focus. But sometimes things get to you, and you don’t fight your fight. The good thing is you keep doing it, and you get better and better. You get more experience, and you can block everything out. And do what you do best. But the better person won that night, and it’s fine.”

Ferdous, who fights in the 51kg weight category, will be back out again at the end of the month at the Asian Games. She hopes to take the lessons learned from her Glasgow experience to her next tournament. “It’s fighting your fight, and don’t worry about what the other person is going to do,” Ferdous says of what she has learned from her time in Scotland. “Bring that mindset. The same way I do in sparring and in training. The same applies in a fight. I have to bring that when I am on stage.”

Ferdous is hoping she will make it to Los Angeles in two years’ time for the next Olympics. But the Bangladesh hopeful wants to get there by right.

“The Olympics is the big goal, but you have to work backwards. Nobody from Bangladesh has ever medalled in the Olympics. That’s the ultimate. We are lucky that we have the opportunity to send fighters over through a wildcard. But I don’t want to use the wildcard. I want to qualify and earn my spot there. So I am working backwards to get there by performing in these larger tournaments. It’s tough to qualify, but you have to set yourself up to get there. Otherwise, what’s the point? I’m confident, and that’s why I am sacrificing so much. So that’s short-term, doing well enough to get to the 2028 Olympics. We will see what happens after that.”

The introduction into boxing is a unique one. “I am a native New Yorker,” Ferdous relayed to me. “My parents are originally from Bangladesh. They moved to New York in the 1980s. Strict parents. They were like you are not doing any extracurriculars. We brought you to the States to go to school. But I always had the itch to do something. I always wanted to play sports. I had friends who danced or did gymnastics. But for whatever reason, my parents said no; focus on school. So I graduated from school and got a good job straight out of college. But I wanted to pick up a hobby and do something fun. And that’s when I discovered boxing. My husband was a fighter. When we were dating, he told me he was a boxer. I had np idea what that meant. One of our early dates, he took me to the gym. I was in the corner, and I could hear these crazy thuds in the corner. That’s how I got introduced to it. The idea of it.

“Early on in our relationship, I asked his friends what I should do for his birthday. They said take him to a fight. So I got tickets to see Gennady Golovkin against Danny Jacobs. I got really good seats at Madison Square Garden. I had never watched a fight. That was the first fight I ever watched. Honestly, I was blown away by it. Most people would see aggression and violence. I saw something so different. I saw strategy. I saw technique. There was so much to it. This looked so hard. I thought, I want to try it. Honestly, that was it. My personality is: if I see something, I want to try it.

“I went to the gym. I really started training. Then I heard about all these white-collar shows. There was one coming up. That was in 2019; that was when I started boxing. But then Covid hit. When gyms opened up again in 2021, I joined a boxing gym, and I said I wanted to do a white-collar event. I made that a goal. I had my first fight in November 2021. I won the fight, and I remember feeling the adrenaline. I had all my colleagues from Google there. My friends. My family. Everyone just came. There was just something about that whole experience, and I wanted to feel it again.”

“I was very lucky I met my coach, Colin Morgan,” Ferdous added. “He is a very accomplished boxing coach. He’s trained world and Pan American champions, but he’s never had an Olympic champion. When we first started interacting, he said I could be really good, and he could get me to the Olympics. It was kind of a challenge that he presented to me, that I took on. So from that first fight, it was seeing where this goes. I had proper mentorship. Proper training. At the time, the goal was 2024, but that didn’t pan out. He actually gave me the advice to switch allegiances and go for Bangladesh.”

The boxing journey started to take shape. “A year in, I won a US National championship. At that point, I started having conversations and exploring the Bangladesh route. I switched in 2023, and Bangladesh told me I would represent them in the Pan American Games. From there it was onwards and upwards. I have represented Bangladesh in eight international tournaments. I got medals in six of them.”

Zinnat Ferdous is now 44 fights into her boxing career. Boxing has found a way into her life. A sport that gives her so much. “Boxing gives me a couple of different things,” Ferdous says. “The biggest thing it gives me is my focus, my mindset, and my drive. Boxing makes me a more driven and disciplined person. It makes you learn how to prioritise and make the best decisions for yourself. I work full time. I work 50-60 hours a week. I have a family. I train full time. Is that the best thing for me to do? Probably not. But the discipline and the drive it gives me, I don’t think I have ever seen that side of me come out before in this light. But I am so passionate, and I am having so much fun doing it. It also gives me a sense of youth. I feel younger. I feel healthier than I ever felt before. This level of competition, in many ways, I feel as though I am in school again. It’s the way my brain is engaging again. That sense of learning.”

Zinnat Ferdous has goals. That desire to make the next Olympics. The possibility of turning professional lingers. But Ferdous, who is incredibly impressive in so many ways, is keeping her options open.

“The story is being written,” Ferdous told me. “There isn’t an end chapter that I am envisioning because every single day that I am living this dream, there are things coming up that I never thought would have been possible. But I do see a couple of different versions. I see turning professional as one. I am also a business professional. Is there a way I can take these real-life experiences as an athlete and join them up with my professional life and give back? I understand that a lot of people haven’t experienced what we athletes feel. Is there a way I can give back and make the sport better? Whether that’s in boxing or sports in general. I might get to the Olympics and stop right there. We’ll just see what happens.”