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. “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.”
I thought, ‘Alright, it’s fine, it’s done, this is enough,” Tariyal told HT.
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.
Her friendship with Tomar goes back to their days at the SAI hostel in Bhopal, where the two lived and trained between 2011-14.
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. “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. Her husband, Kapil, a senior manager at Maruti Suzuki, encouraged her to keep competing. “There is no pressure about having a child or listening to in-laws. His family supports me a lot too.”
“I had no income,” she said. “I might have quit after marriage, but he supported me so much to keep playing,” she said.
