He could be the champion who never took a genuine punch. This is the remarkable tale of Rohit Singh.
The KO King
Part One: No real punches
Next Up: Part Two
Get in the ring!
The struggle to set a fake fighter straight
Next Up: Part Three
For the title
A phoney champion
Next Up: Part Four
20 and 0
A career of lies
Next Up: Part Five
The Mexicans
Rohit goes to Hollywood
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Story and narration by Steve Kilgallon, National Correspondent. Design by Aaron Wood, Digital Designer.

PART TWO: GET IN THE RING!
The struggle to set a fake fighter straight

There became something of a campaign in Kiwi boxing for Rohit Singh to fight someone real, someone he hadn’t handpicked, to see what would happen.

Craig Thomson made a series of offers of ranked Kiwi fighters. All, he says, were declined: “He wouldn’t fight anyone remotely close to having a pulse,” Thomson says.

“I said ‘anyone in the New Zealand heavyweight ranks at the time, take your pick of these guys, you choose. I didn’t care who it was, because I knew they were all legit.”

Bruce Glozier, also feeling aggrieved, made a similar attempt and was rebuffed.

But at the same time, Singh would make bizarre public statements, often in the Indian press, calling out fighters with far superior records, such as Joseph Parker, Shane Cameron and Sonny Bill Williams. He told Indian Newslink that Cameron and Williams were “scared” to fight him. Cameron, asked about it now, doesn’t remember the name Rohit Singh at all.

Joseph Parker, left, and Shane Cameron, right. (GETTY IMAGES and DANIEL GALVIN / STUFF)

Joseph Parker, left, and Shane Cameron, right. (GETTY IMAGES and DANIEL GALVIN / STUFF)

Joseph Parker, top, and Shane Cameron, bottom. GETTY IMAGES and DANIEL GALVIN / STUFF

Parker’s promoter, David Higgins, remembers Singh “buzzing” around, asking to be included on their cards (which as televised stadium bouts, were a significant step up from what Singh had previously appeared on), but being warned not to deal with Singh.

But one man spotted an opportunity he would pursue for the next five years.

Chauncy Welliver, the headliner on the Corporate Box embarrassment, is one of boxing’s nicest guys. A roly-poly heavyweight who emerged from a tough upbringing in Spokane, Washington state, (official nickname, the Hillyard Hammer; unofficial nickname, the Fat, Dorky White Guy) he had far more ability than his stomach suggested and an ultra-durable, frustrating style that made him very hard to knock out. In his 74-fight professional career, he had been in the ring with Alexander Ustinov, Lucas Browne and Sonny Bill Williams.

As early as 2013, Welliver was trying to arrange a double-cross of Singh: agreeing to deliberately lose a fight in return for $3000, then taking the chance to knock over an unbeaten fighter. Singh, likewise, appeared to think Welliver’s record would be a stepping stone to a big fight for him.

“In all honesty, I wanted to get him in the ring with me so I can beat a guy who is 10-0,” says Welliver. “If you asked him, he had these big investors, and he’s going to fight Klitschko and he’s going to take a big fight back to India, and it’s going to be his win over me that gets him there. And I’m thinking ‘you’re f…... nuts’, but I was playing along just to get in the ring with him. Because I am horribly fat and horribly unfit, but I would still destroy him. I was never great to begin with, but I could beat a guy like Rohit Singh.”

Over the years that followed, they would use Facebook Messenger to try and tempt the other to do a deal. Welliver jokes: “Why did I even try when I could’ve done this the whole time?’’

Is he delusional or is he a conman, I ask. “A little bit of both,” says Welliver.

February 18, 2012 v Anmol Tiger, Fighting Fit Gym, Panmure (No contest)

Those who were there struggle to explain what happened in this bout, which even for Singh was a bizarre affair. It was the rematch that nobody had called for against his first victim on New Zealand soil. Yes, it was time for the final curtain of the mysterious Anmol Tiger’s shortlived boxing career.

It seems to be the only one of Singh’s New Zealand fights not to be immortalised on YouTube.

Fortunately, the referee that night was long-time boxing judge, commentator and character Paul McSharry, who is amused to hear the name Rohit Singh once again, and remembers the evening all too well.

McSharry says that almost as the fight began, and without sustaining a blow, Singh went to the canvas complaining of a sore leg.

Instead of waving in the ringside doctor, the unconvinced McSharry instead began a count. Singh got up, the boxers met again, and again Singh went down, this time saying he had hurt a knee. McSharry waved the fight off. He could, he says, have called it a technical knockout to Tiger, but instead he ruled a no contest.

“He wasn’t there to fight, I knew it was a rort, so I called it no contest and told him to get the f... out of the ring,” he says. “I guess if I was thinking about it, I would have TKO’d [given the fight as a technical knockout against Singh] him to teach him a lesson. It seemed like him and Tiger had worked it out among themselves. He complained a little bit in the dressing room afterwards.”

McSharry is in no doubt it was part of a plan, he’s just not sure what. “Every fight he had was against somebody that already had a game set out for him. I saw him fight three or four times and every time without the oppo getting hurt, they fell over.”

What was Singh’s plan that night? Nobody can advance a theory as to what he was up to.

March 23, 2012 v Maruf Ali, ABA Stadium, KO (Round One)

Rohit’s bout with Maruf Ali appears twice on YouTube, thanks to it being re-posted by local boxing identity John ‘Johnny G’ Glozier (brother of Bruce), who appended the caption: “Real or staged?”

Glozier added: “Many people have questioned if this was a rigged fight or a legitimate KO, so now its [sic] online for people to watch and make there [sic] own decision from what they see…”

Singh’s own version has some stirring music and a slow motion version of the moment he knocks Maruf Ali to the canvas - in the first round of course. Like the others, the fighters look out of condition and in Ali’s case, profoundly uninterested. Noticeably, when Singh delivers the knockout punch, Ali has just thrown a jab, then for some reason paused, as if frozen on the spot.

Knockout! The moment that Maruf Ali hits the canvas, early in the first round of his bout with Rohit Singh at the ABA.

Knockout! The moment that Maruf Ali hits the canvas, early in the first round of his bout with Rohit Singh at the ABA.

Maruf Ali repeatedly denies it was a fix or that Singh paid him. He says he had trained at the Papatoetoe Boxing Club (Joseph Parker’s old club) but admits he was in poor condition when Singh challenged him. “I was an out-of-shape bum in those days,” he says.

After that he got fit and took up martial arts, but thanks to back and knee injuries suffered at work, he’s again in poor shape.

He admits he’s heard other fights of Singh’s were fixed, and that lots of people asked whether his was too. “A lot of guys were messaging me … asking ‘oh how much did Rohit Singh pay you?’” But his version is that it was a good knockout. “I was more focused on the crowd, and the thing happened so sudden ... His punch is f…... hard, and it caught me hard.”

This was Rohit Singh’s final fight in New Zealand. By now, he had amassed enough victories to go international.

At first, his ambitions appeared to lie in Australia. But Craig Thomson took to posting on boxing internet message boards warning promoters over there not to fall for the same schtick. “He would send me threats saying he was going to smash me. I was saying ‘OK then, come on man’... A couple of guys were throwing his name around and I said ‘don’t go near him’.”

So instead, Singh came up with an even more audacious plan.

REPORTER & NARRATOR
STEVE KILGALLON

DESIGN & VIDEO ANIMATION
AARON WOOD

DEVELOPMENT
SUYEON SON

VISUALS
CHRIS McKEEN

SOUND
ABIGAIL DOUGHERTY

EDITOR
JOHN HARTEVELT