Featuring music composed by Santhosh Narayanan, with a background score by Sanjay Wandrekar and Atul Raninga (for the Hindi version), the film has cinematography by Sivakumar Vijayan and editing by Sathish Suriya.

15 years later, he is a government coach for the national women's boxing training academy but is always extremely angry with the lethargic attitude of boxers and frustrated with the partiality in selection.

Due to his constant rift with the association head Dev Khatri, he is falsely charged with sexual harassment in Delhi and gets transferred to Chennai to identify and develop new women boxers.

Despite the very poor infrastructure, Prabhu/Adi manages to find natural talent in a roadside fish seller named Ezhil Madhi, who he notices while she is thrashing the judges during her elder sister Lakshmi "Lux"'s tournament.

Ignoring Lux who has been boxing for eight years to get a sports quota government job, Prabhu/Adi offers to pay and train Madhi for a few hours daily.

Adi later asks Lux and Madhi's parents, Saamikannu and Damayanthi, to send them to stay in a hostel with him so that their daughters can work hard on training.

The junior coach states that they would have to pay a considerably lower amount if Madhi had agreed to stay in jail for a few days.

In the match, she keeps losing points in the early rounds and gets badly injured before Prabhu/Adi shows up at the stadium and indicates her to attack her opponent's arms to make her weak as Genghis Khan did to his enemies.

Dev quickly jumps into the ring to take the credit for training Madhi, but she heavily punches him and runs to Prabhu/Adi.

[2] Kongara consequently began gathering further information about female boxers and networked with Indian Olympic athletes including Mary Kom, in order to help write her script.

[4] Portraying a retired boxer, Madhavan grew a thick beard and sported long hair for his role in the film, while embarking on an intense body conditioning regime in Los Angeles during 2013.

[10] The team also brought in director Rajkumar Hirani, as a result of his close association with Madhavan, to act as creative producer for the film and he helped doctor the script to give it a pan-Indian appeal.

Two professional boxers from a boxing academy, Ritika Singh and Mumtaz Sorcar, who has done films in Bengali, were signed to play the two female leads.

Rajkumar Hirani's late inclusion in the project meant that he requested the team to re-shoot certain portions, with Madhavan regrowing a long beard after having removed it in December 2014.

[22][23] Throughout the production of the film and dubbing purposes, Madhavan wore metal braces inside his teeth, in order to create the effect of having a lisp that most boxers have from sporting injuries.

Lyrics for the soundtrack of Saala Khadoos in its entirety was penned by Swanand Kirkire, whilst Vivek and Muthamil wrote the tracks for Irudhi Suttru.

[26] Varun Manian's Radiance Media initially agreed to distribute the Tamil version of the film, collaborating with YNOT Studios and Thirukumaran Entertainment, but later opted out of the agreement.

[27] During the period of post-production work throughout 2015, Madhavan and Hirani held several screenings of the film to select audiences in order to observe opinions and gather feedback.

[29][30][31] In early January 2016, the film began their marketing campaign with the makers travelling to Madurai and Coimbatore for promotions, after launching the Tamil version of the soundtrack in Chennai.

[33] During his time in Coimbatore, Madhavan visited a college and delivered a motivational speech, while he also made several television appearances for special shows to be broadcast on Pongal and Republic Day.

[42][43] IndiaGlitz.com rated the film 4.3 out of 5 and wrote it is "a must watch for lovers of good cinema which entertains and engages through out", while Baradwaj Rangan of The Hindu stated it was "a heart-warming boxing drama".

The critic added "it truly deserves an ovation and is worth your time and money", while stating Madhavan "delivers an extraordinary and extremely realistic performance", while Singh "is definitely a revelation and a find of Bollywood".