A woman who knows how to pick a fight

[cobra commando]

Mixed martial arts (MMA) professional Priyanka Jeet Toshi, 23, is gunning for a fresh fight with the Philippines' Jujeath Nagaowa. In their face-off in May, Toshi's last international outing in a cage, Nagaowa had rained punches on Toshi's head and body with such relentlessness that the referee had to give the match victory to the Filipina by technical knockout. "My strategy was to take her down to the floor and that's what I kept trying to do," says Toshi, one of India's first, and in some ways most successful, women MMA professionals. Women's MMA in India, as in the rest of the world, is a fairly new sport. Most experts peg 2012 as the watershed year, when the US- based Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) opened its contests to women and introduced performers like Ronda Rousey into the mix. In India, organizations like the Full Contact Championships had been holding contests since 2009, but the women's bouts were infrequent at best. "MMA is the fastest growing sport in terms of viewership, and opening the contests up to women had a lot to do with mainstreaming it," says film- maker Von Brian Saxena, who released his documentary, MMA India: Fighting For A Dream, in June. He interviewed professional fighters such as Toshi, fight promoters, coaches and MMA gym owners in the film to chronicle the story of the sport in India, right up to the recent mushrooming of MMA/self- defence gyms for amateurs. "When a sport percolates to that level, that's when you know it's really catching on," says Saxena. Part of Saxena's aim in making the film was also to introduce the sport which few seem to understand or fully appreciate.


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A woman who knows how to pick a fight - Livemint