Meenakshi upsets World Rank 1 Antim Panghal, seals Indian spot in Asian Championships

As the referee slapped his palm on the mat, signalling a victory by pinfall, Meenakshi Goyat let out a shriek of delight. Only then did she release from underneath her, her opponent, Antim Panghal. Antim, a two-time world medallist, continued to lie flat on her back on the mat at New Delhi’s KD Jadhav stadium on Tuesday afternoon, while Meenakshi continued to clap, almost in disbelief at what she had accomplished.

Before the contest to determine the Indian representative in the women’s 53kg category at next month’s Asian Wrestling Championships, few would have given Meenakshi much of a chance. Her opponent, Antim, is India’s most accomplished active women’s wrestler. She’s a two-time world medallist and the current number one in the international 53kg world rankings. The last time Antim had been beaten by any other Indian was all the way back in 2022, when she was hardly 18 years-old.

Difficult sleep

Meenakshi would say later that she struggled to sleep the night before the selection trials. The 25-year-old knew her day was going to be a hard one. She wasn’t completely fit — Meenakshi says she’s still recuperating from a shoulder injury that has prevented her from training with full intensity. Furthermore,  Meenakshi knew that if she was going to earn a place in the Indian roster for the continental championships, she’d have to get the better of Antim. She’d also known that she’d faced Antim four times previously — all in selection trials — and lost every time. That record would explain why Meenakshi, who had won her first national championships gold medal as a 20-year-old in 2021, had only made two international teams in the last 5 years.

“I was playing out today’s match in my mind. I was thinking Antim would do this and I would counter with this. Or I was thinking about what technique she was going to do. It took me several hours before I could even go to sleep,” she’d tell Sportstar later.

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But although she had slept fitfully and despite the record that weighed against her, Meenakshi willed herself to stay confident. It was hard she says.

“I’ve played a lot of international competitions as a junior but very few as a senior. I would always end up losing in the trials, many times to Antim only. Those losses put a lot of pressure on me. Every time I competed in a trial competition, I started thinking about this pressure. As a wrestler, I always used to dream of becoming the top wrestler in the world, but I was always facing this realisation that I wasn’t even able to win in a selection trial,” she says.

Sometimes the fear would be overwhelming but Meenakshi says her family never let her doubt herself. “My father and brother motivated me a lot. They kept telling me not to be afraid. That I had a lot of talent and that I worked really hard. They kept giving me the confidence that I only needed to fight and show what I had inside me. There is nothing to lose. There’s only something to gain,” she says.

Meenakshi says her family has always had her back. Growing up in Chabri village in Haryana’s Jind district, she was the first in her family to develop an interest in wrestling. “I actually didn’t know the difference between Olympic wrestling and WWE (pro wrestling). I was a big fan of WWE and (professional wrestler) John Cena! I wanted to do that at first. In my family, no one had any idea about what that was. My father was a farmer, so he didn’t have any knowledge either. At first, he thought the only place to learn wrestling was in Delhi, but he eventually found out that there was a sports hostel near our village and that’s where I first went to train,” she says.

Nidani Sports Hostel has a reputation for producing elite women’s wrestlers. Meenakshi grew up training alongside Olympian and world silver medallist Anshu Malik. But while she was competitive in the junior ranks — she won silver at the 2017 cadet world championships and a gold at the 2024 Asian U-23 championships — she struggled to break through in the seniors.

That fear hadn’t disappeared before the selection trials for the Asian championships either. “I was having the same fear this time as well but I managed to break out of this mental block. I thought whatever happens I should give it my best until I don’t have anything else to give. I was carrying a shoulder injury before the competition and I was thinking I should skip this trial because the main competition is the Asian Games but I thought there was no point trying to hide. I should give my best attempt no matter what,” she says.

After picking up 10-0 wins in her first two matches in the selection trials against Gauri and Anjali in the first couple of rounds Meenakshi set up a clash against Antim and got a chance to see if her mental block had truly faded.

Defensive strength

It did seem to have. Despite a slow start, she built her confidence by refusing to allow Antim to score easy points. She then opened the score, countering a leg attack by Antim by going behind her. While Antim countered that move and scored a single point, that first two-point move gave Meenakshi confidence. While Antim levelled the score in the second round, after forcing Meenakshi to step out of the mat, there was no unanswered flurry of points.

As the timer counted down, the scores were level 2-2 with Meenakshi leading by virtue of scoring the only takedown of the match. Antim was forced to attack and Meenakshi countered in one go, going behind for two points and then forcing her opponent’s shoulders to the mat for another two points. That 6-2 lead would probably have been decisive, but Meenakshi continued the same move and sealed the win with a victory by fall

Even as she savoured the triumph, Meenakshi says she could have done even better. While she had prevented Antim from scoring points, she says she had failed to counter even more than she had. “I was a little nervous. Before the match, I was thinking I would do more of the go behind style counters, but I wasn’t able to perform exactly how I had hoped,” she says.

She didn’t win exactly how she had hoped for, but Meenakshi has the chance to do better at the Asian Championships in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, next month. She knows the odds are once again against her. “There will be very strong wrestlers from Japan, China and North Korea. But now that I’ve been selected, I will only go to the Asian Championships thinking I will win gold,” she says. 

Published on Mar 17, 2026