A video of a Muslim woman boxer preventing the referee from holding her hand during the announcement of the winner is being widely shared on social media platforms claiming that she behaved this way because of her religious beliefs. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a Muslim woman boxer preventing the referee from holding her hand during match winner announcement because of her religious beliefs.
Fact: Full video of the boxing match shows that the women boxer (Kholova of Tajikistan) later allowing the referee to hold her hand during winner announcement. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING
We ran a reverse image search using keyframes extracted from the viral video and found that the full-length video uploaded on SPORT LIVE YouTube channel with a title “HERE IS AN UZBEK GIRL WINNING A LONG TIME AGO | Kazakova Feruza (uzb) – Kholova Husniya (tjk)”. This video shows a semi-final boxing match between Kazakova Feruza (Blue Jersey) of Uzbekistan and Kholova Husniya (Red Jersey) of Tajikistan in Asian U22 Boxing Championship in Flyweight category.
At 3:00 minutes time stamp in full length video, Kholova can be seen covering her face and getting emotional. When the referee tried to hold her hand during the winner announcement, initially she refused. But at 3:14, she eventually allowed him to do so.
After the referee announced Kazakova of Uzbekistan as winner, both the players greeted each other and their opponent’s coaches as well. The official draw sheet of the tournament can be seen here
We then searched to check if there are any instances where Kholova preventing the referee from holding her hand but couldn’t find any videos of her online. However, we found instances where referees declare the winners with and without holding the hands of women Muslim boxers. Also, boxing rules for each tournament vary regarding winner announcement. Some of them can be seen here, here, and here.
To sum it up, a clipped video is being shared as visuals of a Muslim woman boxer preventing the referee from holding her hand.
