Kabir Khan’s Chandu Champion will see Kartik Aaryan play Murlikant Petkar, India’s first Paralympics gold medallist. Needless to say, he went through rigorous training to look the part of a freestyle swimmer in the film, which involved reducing his weight from 90 kgs to 72 kgs and his body fat from 39% to 7%. In fact, Kartik recently took to social media to share a viral before-and-after transformation picture of himself that encompassed his journey from an ‘insomniac’ to a ‘fitness enthusiast’.
While some lauded him for his efforts, a section of netizens questioned the authenticity of the first picture that featured a fuller version of him with a paunch. They claimed that it was heavily manipulated and photoshopped just to draw emotional support from audiences. Now, in an exclusive chat with News18 Showsha, Tridev Pandey, a national level boxer, who coached Kartik for Chandu Champion, reacts to these reports.
He tells us, “I’ll keep posting videos of Kartik over the next few days for people to see. I’ve a video of him boxing where he’s wearing a hoodie and one can see the fat and his tires visible on either side of his waist. He has been fatter than what you see in the picture before the transformation and he looked especially fat when he would be bare bodied. It’s a completely natural picture and there’s no photoshop involved there.”
Tridev reveals that he had started a ‘program-based workout’ with Kartik in 2022 for Chandu Champion and back then, the actor was as heavy as seen in the picture that has garnered a lot of scrutiny. Talking about how Kartik’s physicality had ‘shocked’ him, he says, “In the beginning, I gave him some basic movements like squats, pull-ups and push-ups, and he couldn’t do any of it! I knew that he had gained weight for Freddy but the fact that he couldn’t pull off even these basic movements really shocked me.”
The fitness expert, who also trains Rajkummar Rao, Sanya Malhotra and Wamiqa Gabbi, further continues, “It was disturbing for me. We had to start everything from the scratch, from a beginner’s level. From not being able to do a single push-up, he managed to do them with 50 kgs weight on his back. It took us 13-14 months to achieve our target.”
Tridev also talks about the first poster of Chandu Champion that featured a mud-smeared Kartik running wearing a langot. And that, he states, was a picture that was slightly edited. “I’ll not lie. There’s a bit of editing in his legs but not in his upper body. But it’s very minor. I was there when the picture was taken. I was there during the shoot and I was running alongside him. Unnees bees ka hi fark hai bas,” he reveals.
He continues, “The second poster of the film that sees Kartik as a boxer is a completely natural picture. The thing is, even we, as normal people, edit pictures before putting them up on Instagram. We sometimes tend to increase the brightness or the sharpness. But other than that, no other touch ups happened.”
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