New Delhi: A knee injury, systemic hurdles, and difficult life circumstances had distanced Suchika Tariyal from judo. It was her solace, a sport that had shaped much of her life. At the time, she had made peace with walking away from sports, entirely.
But two people from India’s mixed martial arts community – UFC fighter Pooja Tomar and former ONE championship fighter Himanshu Kaushik — pulled her right back.
“I had given up. I thought, ‘Alright, it’s fine, it’s done, this is enough,” Tariyal told HT. “Then Pooja and Himanshu forced me to try it once, saying that my skills were good and I would pick it up quickly. These two are the ones who brought me into MMA.”
At 36, Tariyal will give glory another shot. In fact, she will be part of history as MMA makes its Asian Games debut. Tariyal will compete in the traditional women’s 60kg category, a sporting journey that has taken her from judo to kurash to jiu-jitsu and, finally, MMA with each switch dictated by circumstance and administrative failure rather than ambition.
Her friendship with Tomar goes back to their days at the SAI hostel in Bhopal, where the two lived and trained between 2011-14. Tomar was a wushu athlete and Tariyal, a judoka. Tariyal describes Tomar as a younger sister. Years later, when Tariyal was struggling to find a way forward, Tomar and Kaushik saw an MMA fighter in her grappling-heavy skill set.
Systematic hurdles
She represented India in judo at the Commonwealth Games 2022, in kurash at the Asian Games in 2023 and was Jiu-Jitsu World Champion in 2024. However, repeated administrative upheavals altered the sporting landscape around her.
In January, the jiu-jitsu team for the 2026 Asian Games was axed and the structure changed, the path she had been preparing for effectively disappeared. So, Tariyal switched again, this time entering the MMA trials.
Qualification brought another hurdle. Midway through the process, the eligibility requirements changed, requiring athletes to secure a top-six Asian ranking. Without immediate government funding for that trip, Tariyal paid her own way to the Asian Championship. She returned with two bronze medals for India.
That result eventually helped her dossier clear the administrative process and brought her into the Target Asian Games scheme and support from the MMA-SFI federation.
Tariyal works as a judo coach with the Haryana Sports Department. Competing means taking unpaid leave for sporting commitments.
“I had no income,” she said. “My husband works in marketing. He has a good credit limit, so I manage everything through his credit card,” she laughed. “Fllights and all are managed like that and later we pay it off in instalments or when I earn money from BRAVE fights, I put it towards that. That’s how we managed.”
Her two fights for BRAVE CF (one win, one loss) were important beyond the results. They gave Tariyal international exposure and showed her exactly how far she had to go in MMA. It exposed her to the demands of professional MMA and allowed her to identify the gaps in her game and work on them.
The partner who stood like a rock
But there is another reason Tariyal has been able to keep making these switches and starts and is continuing to push.
Her husband, Kapil, a senior manager at Maruti Suzuki, encouraged her to keep competing. “I might have quit after marriage, but he supported me so much to keep playing,” she said. “There is no pressure about having a child or listening to in-laws. His family supports me a lot too.”
For Tariyal, that support is particularly significant because of what men had come to represent to her growing up. She was harassed as a child whilst getting a haircut. The trauma fostered a deep resentment towards men.
“As a child, you don’t understand what is happening. I went into depression, and I developed a hatred towards men,” she said.
“I got married in my 30s, only after meeting Kapil, because I had never met a man like him before,” she says. “My mother used to wonder if I would ever get married because I resented men, thinking they are all bad and untrustworthy.”
“Kapil sees that I can still do it,” she said. “His trust in me makes me feel that if I had gotten all this support earlier, I could have done even better.”
“Now that I have another chance, I feel I need to complete what was left unfinished,” Tariyal says. “I just want a medal. Thinking about that gives me inner strength… that yes, I can do this.”
Kapil is waiting, rooting for her back in Gurugram, waiting with bated breath as his partner hopes to write a new chapter in Aichi-Nagoya.
