Anita Wins Pakistan’s First Women’s MMA Fight

Islamabad, Pakistan – Six months into her training as a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, Anita Karim grappled with her father on their living room floor, knocking him unconscious in six seconds.

Sitting in a busy coffee shop in Pakistan’s capital on a balmy day in October, Anita laughs as she recalls that summer afternoon in 2017.

“Papa was stronger, and he pulled me down, but I had better technique, so I went behind him and applied a rear-naked choke – a martial arts chokehold – and counted the seconds until he was out,” she says.

“He regained consciousness quickly,” she adds, “but not before my mum had screamed at me for trying to kill my father.”

Her father, however, was impressed with her skills.

It was Anita’s first trip back to her family home in Karimabad, a historic town in northern Pakistan’s mountainous Gilgit-Baltistan region 2,500 metres (8,200ft) above sea level and 700km (435 miles) from Islamabad, where she was living and training with her three older brothers.

A few months earlier, she told her parents over a tense phone call that her heart was set on MMA and she was dropping out of university to become a fighter.

Dressed in light blue jeans, a white T-shirt and a brown bomber jacket, Anita smiles as she retraces her journey into the brutal world of MMA fighting.

MMA is a full-contact combat sport that combines techniques from boxing, grappling, karate, Brazilian jiujitsu and kickboxing. A typical MMA bout leaves both fighters with a bloodied face, bruised body, swollen eyes and, occasionally, broken limbs.

Before Anita’s international debut in July 2018, no woman from Pakistan had ever competed in an international MMA fight.

Now, eight years later, Anita steped into the ring as a home favourite as Pakistan hosted its first-ever professional women’s MMA fight on Saturday. She delivered a dominant performance, knocking out Iran’s Parisa Shamsabadi in the very first round.

- Author: Hafsa Adil, Al Jazeera

Read more...