Mr. Mehrullah Lassi was born in Karachi on 24th November 1979. He started playing Boxing from childhood and at the age of 14 years he won Under-14 Boxing Championships. He also won Gold Medal in Under-16 Inter-Provincial Boxing Championships held at Quetta in 1995.

In 1996 he won National Cadet and Junior Championships. He participated in Green Hill International Boxing Tournaments in bantamweight class in 1998 & 2000 and won Bronze Medals. With consistence performance he secured No.1 position in Pakistan Boxing Rankings.
Taking into consideration his outstanding performance, he was selected in Pakistan Boxing Team for representing Pakistan in 14th Asian Games held in South Korea in October 2002, where he won the only Gold Medal for the country in featherweight class (57-Kg) and brought glory and laurels for Pakistan.

He is likely to make an international comeback next month after serving two-year suspension as it is expected that the selection committee will include him in the national squad for the Asian Boxing Championships which would be held in Zhuhai, China from June 5 to 14.

“I have been receiving information from South Korea that Mehrullah is doing well during the training and is improving briskly and I am hopeful that he will make a place in the national squad,” the PBF secretary Muhammad Akram Khan said..

It would be a great achievement for him to stage a comeback since he and his teammate Faisal Karim, was slapped with a life ban by the PBF in 2006 after both were tested positive for using cannabis at Colombo’s South Asian Games. The organizers of the South Asian Games had recommended a six-month suspension but the PBF had surprisingly imposed a life ban on him.

However, it was later converted into two-year suspension as per International Boxing Association (AIBA) and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rules. The two-year ban expired in August 2008 and Mehrullah was seen for the first time in the boxing ring during the National Ranking Championship held early this year.

The pugilist, who was awarded a record five million rupees by former President General Pervez Musharraf for winning the Asian Games gold, has said that it was a good feeling to be back, the two-year ban had done the damage as he missed the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“I was unfortunate that I missed the Olympics because of the ban. But now I am back and it feels good, my parents also wanted me to start boxing again. Besides, I have also a family to look after now. But it’s not only the financial aspect. Boxing runs in my blood and I love my country. Some play for fame, some for fortune, Mehrullah plays for Pakistan. I want to see Pakistan again on the victory podium in the major international events,” the boxer said.

The final squad for the Asian Championships in China will be announced tomorrow (Thursday). It is pertinent to mention here that currently 12 boxers including Rashid Fateh, Nadir (48kg), Muhammad Wasim (51kg), Muhammad Hussain, Ali Muhammad (54kg), Mehrullah Lassi, Qadir Khan (57kg), Tariq Zia (60kg), Arshad Hussain (64kg), Nadir Khan, Dur Muhammad (69kg), Nisar Khan (75kg) are training in Seoul under the supervision of coaches Arshad Hussain and Ali Bakhsh.

The squad will return on June 2 and six boxers along with four officials will be sent to China on June 6 to feature in the Asian Boxing Championships.

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