In Budhana, a farming town in Muzaffarnagar district, a girl stood outside her house for hours, watching men practice wushu on the street. Her father, a farmer who had once been a sprinter until family finances ended that ambition, died when she was seven. Gradually, she began to copy what she saw on the street outside her home.
Three decades later, in October 2023, Puja Tomar became the first Indian-born woman to sign a contract with the UFC. Tomar has said that it was her father’s memory, more than any facility or programme, that she carried into every decision about her career. The journey to this historic contract was not linear.
Tomar turned professional in 2013 under the now-Super Fight League, having already built a competitive record in Wushu, winning national titles four times and representing India at the World Wushu Championships. In 2017, she moved to ONE Championship, Asia’s premier MMA promotion, where the level of competition proved unforgiving. She won one of five fights before parting ways with the promotion in 2020. Following this, she rebuilt on India’s domestic circuit, at Matrix Fight Night, achieving four straight victories, winning her the promotion’s inaugural women’s strawweight title in November 2022.
This title run brought her back in view of the UFC, and in October 2023 she signed with them. Eight months later, on 8th June 2024, she beat Brazil’s Rayanne Doe Santos by split decision at UFC Louisville. She became not only the first Indian woman to win inside the octagon, but the first Indian fighter to do so.
In March 2025, at UFC London, Tomar dropped Shauna Bannon with a left high kick in the second round, but Bannon recovered and locked Tomar in an armbar for the finish. Fourteen months later, in May 2026, she suffered another defeat by submission to China’s Shi Ming in the first round of a Road to UFC card in Macau. The two consecutive finishes left her at 1-2 in the UFC and 9-6 as a professional, training out of Soma Fight Club in Bali, still, by most accounts, India’s biggest reference point in the sport.
In most sporting cultures, the ‘reference point’ is not a fixed title. It is contested and periodically reassigned as new talent emerges. In countries with a deep bench of comparable athletes, when a fighter loses back-to-back bouts, attention redistributes towards whoever is rising. India’s MMA pipeline does not offer emerging talent. Tomar and Anshul Jubli, the first Indian fighter to sign with and win inside the UFC, remain, between them, the entirety of India’s active UFC roster and both sit below .500 within the promotion. Their status as the country’s reference points, therefore, is not solely a function of results. It is also a function of scarcity. There is, at present, no other talent available or positioned to take the title instead.
This difference reframes what ‘first’ means in a sporting context where the infrastructure has not produced a second, a third or a tenth. Tomar’s own path illustrates the gap. Shoe does not train in India but in Bali, at a gym built specifically to prepare Indian fighters for international competitions because no comparable ecosystem exists at home. Similarly, Jubli built his unbeaten domestic run through the Matrix Fight Night, a privately promoted circuit, before travelling out to earn his contract. Neither fighter rose through a government academy or federation pipeline of the kind that wushu itself once offered Tomar at the national level. Her titles came through a discipline she picked up by watching strangers on the street, not through any structured MMA development pathway in India. A ‘first’ with no imminent second is evidence of a system that does not possess the structure to replicate the first.
Framing Tomar as a ‘reference point’ is not a competitive assessment but rather symbolic. She represents India. Reference points carry meaning beyond the sport. In light of her recent losses, this representation risks overshadowing her identity as an athlete first and foremost. An athlete should be allowed to have a difficult stretch. It is a part of sports. We risk inflating a losing streak to a national concern or insulating that losing streak from the evaluation that every professional fighter has to undergo.
Tomar has stated that she wants to become a UFC Champion. This ambition will eventually be judged on wins and losses alone, the way every other fighter in the division is judged. Whether India is ready to judge her the same way, rather than as the custodian of a national milestone, is the harder question. And harder still is the reality that despite her having paved the way for India in the sport, there is a severe lack of structural and systematic support for her and to propel her legacy.
References
- India Today – Harbouring Olympic dreams, Puja Tomar eyes impact beyond UFC octagon for India
- Harbouring Olympic dreams, Puja Tomar eyes impact beyond UFC octagon for India - India Today.
- ONE Championship – Puja Tomar Pursues Martial Arts Glory to Honour Her Late Father
- Puja Tomar Pursues Martial Arts Glory To Honour Her Late Father - ONE Championship – The Home of Martial Arts
- KHEL NOW – Puja Tomar becomes the first-ever Indian woman to sign a UFC contract
- Puja Tomar becomes 1st ever Indian woman to sign a UFC contract
- Sportskeeda – UFC brass issues statement on first female Indian fighter Puja Tomar making history inside the octagon
- UFC brass issues statement on first female Indian fighter Puja Tomar making history inside octagon
- Sportskeeda – Indian UFC star Puja Tomar issues statement on loss to Conor McGregor’s SBG teammate Shauna Bannon
- Indian UFC star Puja Tomar issues statement on loss to Conor McGregor's SBG teammate Shauna Bannon
- Tapology – Shauna Bannon vs Puja Tomar
- Shauna Bannon vs. Puja Tomar, UFC Fight Night | MMA Bout | Tapology
- MMA Mania - Shi Ming submits Puja Tomar in Road To UFC main event | MMA Mania
- UFC – Anshul Jubli is proudly flying the flag for Indian MMA
- Anshul Jubli Is Proudly Flying The Flag For Indian MMA | UFC