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B-boy Wildchild from India poses for a portrait at the Red Bull BC One World Final in New York, USA on November 8th, 2022
© Little Shao/Red Bull Content Pool
Breaking
Wildchild on overcoming obstacles and succeeding against the odds
Discover the fascinating story of B-Boy Wildchild from India, who never gave up on his dream and was able to prove the doubters wrong by making the Red Bull BC One World Final.
Written by Emmanuel Adelekun
6 min readPublished on
B-Boy Wildchild is only the second breaker from India to compete at the Red Bull BC One World Final. His journey to earn the prestigious wildcard is one of consistency, hard work, self-belief in the face of doubters, and a constant desire to test himself against the best.
01

A strict family who didn't see value in dance

Born and raised in Mumbai, India, Eshwar Kanhaiya Tiwari got the breaking name Wildchild because he always loved doing wild, crazy moves. Breaking since 2012, when he was 14, Wildchild was raised in a strict family, who didn’t see dance as a serious career path and always tried to stop him from going to practice.
“My family is big, with 17/18 people in it, and almost no one used to support me. They'd say that dance is nothing, and you can’t earn money with that.”
I had to hide from my family to go and train
Wildchild
Wildchild used to have to sneak out of his house to avoid his family trying to stop him, saying, “I had to hide from my family to go and train.”
02

The importance of his mother’s support

The one person who always supported his dancing, and has had the biggest influence on his belief and mindset, is Wildchild’s mother.
"Only my mum supported me and she knows everything about breaking. She wanted to be a police officer, but she left all the studies and got married. Now she sees her dream in me, always pushes me and would say, ‘I want to see you everywhere and on the world final stage.’"
Fuelled by his mother being behind him and motivated to prove to his family that he could turn breaking into a successful career, Wildchild continued to train hard, and from 2014 he won 16 to 17 events in a row. This boosted his confidence and he went to his mum to tell her, 'I can do this.'
B-boy Wildchild from India poses for a portrait prior to the Red Bull BC One World Final in New York, USA on november 8th, 2022
Wildchild does an airchair in New York City© Little Shao/Red Bull Content Pool
03

Travelling and opportunities

Wildchild always knew that he needed to travel and test himself against the best in the world and would visualise doing so in training.
“Whenever I used to train, I’d imagine being on world stages, battling Victor or Hong 10, because I knew I was going to travel.”
But like many Indian breakers, he didn’t have the money to travel, so he'd ask those who did questions about how the scene was outside of India. Even though they warned him, 'It’s hard. If they practise, they will smoke you,' Wildchild was never deterred and instead said, “I have to go and see with my own eyes.”
Wildchild’s first trip outside of India was to South Korea in 2017, to compete at the event, KOD [Keep On Dancing] with his crew at the time (together with Flying Machine and Soul Sonic). They won an India qualifier to go and the experience of seeing the level of the South Korean scene blew Wildchild away. This motivated him to train even harder.
It was then in 2019 when Wildchild created an opportunity to show the world his talent. He won the Breezer 1-on-1 breaking competition in India and earned a cash prize large enough to pay for one solo competition trip outside of the country. Wildchild used the money to travel to Taiwan and entered the Hualien B-Boy City Undisputed competition. This would be his first solo competition outside of India and he made it count.
He qualified for the main top-16 battle out of a field of almost 300 breakers, dropped two crazy rounds in his first battle against Jilou, and then had an epic clash with Mighty Jimm, where the two b-boys went back and forth with blow ups and insane moves.
Wildchild’s performance at Hualien B-Boy City went viral, and as a result, he said: “I got so many invitations after, because everyone was like, 'wow this guy is from India?!' And for him, finally competing in a solo battle outside of the country was an experience that he says, “was crazy, I saw amazing breakers live that I used to see on YouTube, and I felt so grateful.”
B-Boy Wildchild from India competes at the Red Bull BC One Last Chance Cypher in Shakespeare theatre in Gdansk, Poland on November 4, 2021
Wildchild is known for insane blow-ups, crazy moves and high energy© Little Shao/Red Bull Content Pool
04

The Red Bull BC One dream and family support

Wildchild also continued to pursue his dream of competing at the Red Bull BC One World Final by entering the Red Bull BC One Cypher India every year possible. He reached the finals of the cypher in 2018 and 2019 and then finally won it in 2021. Travelling to Poland to compete for the first time in the Last Chance Cypher, Wildchild qualified for the top-16 battle of the cypher winners from around the world. He didn’t make it into the Red Bull BC One World Final, but he added to his reputation as a b-boy with some of the wildest moves on the scene.
By this time, through his success, Wildchild had proved to his family that he could make a career out of dance, happily revealing that, “now my family is very positive and support me, believing I can do it.” And going on to joke: “whenever I’m chilling in my house, maybe playing games or something, my grandma comes and kicks me, telling me, 'go to training!'
Whenever I’m chilling in my house... my grandma comes and kicks me, telling me, 'go to training!'
Wildchild
So when Wildchild got the call that he'd be a wildcard, meaning an invited competitor, in the Red Bull BC One World Final 2022, not only did all his hard work pay off, but his family members also came to the airport in support, to see him off when he took his trip to New York City.
B-Boy Wildchild performs during India Finals of Red Bull Campus Clutch in Mumbai, India on September 24, 2022
B-Boy Wildchild: the only thing the breakers in India lack is experience© Aliasgar Bharmal/Red Bull Content Pool
05

The growing Indian scene

The India breaking scene is still growing, full of eager breakers also trying to become successful. This was fuelled even more when the Red Bull BC One World Final 2019 took place in Mumbai, as Wildchild explains: “The 2019 World Final was a big thing for us, everybody watched. After that, everyone is hungry and training harder. We have, like, 2,000 b-boys and b-girls in India, and they want to be on that stage and win the Red Bull BC One Cypher India.”
Wildchild sees the potential in all the hard working breakers in his country, believing the only thing holding them back is the fact that: “in India they just don’t have opportunities. We're not rich and don’t have much money to put into buying flight tickets. And we don’t have that experience of battling with big breakers. That's the difference, we only lack experience.”
So, go do your thing, love it, and believe in yourself
Wildchild
What Wildchild has learned, and advises, from the experience he now has, is that if you want to succeed, “no one can come to hold your hand and take you – you have to get up and achieve it. So, go do your thing, love it, and believe in yourself."
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Red Bull BC One is the biggest one-on-one b-boy and b-girl competition in the world. Every year, thousands of dancers battle for a chance to represent at the World Final.

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