🃏When Fiza Nazir’s parents visit Thailand to meet her, they never step into the gym, never watch her train, never see her inside the ring. She understands why: “No parent wishes to see their child being punched.”
🍰Twenty-four-year-old Fiza Nazir from Srinagar is an international Mixed Martial Arts (IMMA) fighter. She won a gold medal in the senior women’s -56.7 kg weight class at the Asian MMA Championship 2023 in Bahrain. She also competed in the 2024 International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF) World Championships in Uzbekistan.
🗹Fiza says her father, Nazir Ahmad, a former football coach and an athlete himself, understands sports. But what he struggles with is the nature of her sport - the punches, the bruises, the injuries. “My parents visit me, spend months with me, but never once come to see me train,” Fiza says. “My father always tells me, ‘I don’t care if you win or lose, I just want you to stay safe.’”
🍎For every woman who fights in the ring, there is always a battle to fight outside the ring.
♔Fiza’s journey into martial arts began when she was just six, an eager schoolgirl drawn to the thrill of competition. She won tournament after tournament. But in a place like Kashmir, sports - especially combat sports - is not seen as a career. It's not even an easy option for boys, let alone a consideration for girls.
ꦏAt home, her parents made it clear: martial arts could be a hobby, not a career. Like most Kashmiri parents, they dreamed of her becoming a doctor.
𒉰“It’s not only the parents; even the relatives of your relatives, from here to the farthest branches of the family tree want to know what a teenager is up to," Fiza says. “Most of them don’t want you to waste your time on passions when you could have a successful career.”
♎Between her love for the sport and her family’s expectations, she did what many would do. She tried to do both. She was convinced that she would become a doctor for her parents, so she took up science in Higher Secondary School. But even as she studied, she never let go of the ring.
𒉰At the same time, Fiza’s elder sister and her only sibling, Tansheema, was everything she was not. Tansheema was calm and followed a conventional career path. An engineering student by then, she was the “perfect” daughter, one who buried herself in the books. Fiza was constantly compared to her. For years, she harboured frustration toward her sister, who, much like their parents, constantly told her that sports wouldn’t take her anywhere. “I grew up hard-hearted, and for most of my teenage years, my sole purpose in life was to prove my sister wrong,” she says.
It was in 2018 that Fiza finally found a sense of direction when she won the 'Best Fighter Woman'🐲 title after she clinched gold in an International Thang-Ta Championship at Imphal in Manipur. That was the moment when she knew she wanted to give her all to this sport. And that’s also when her parents realised that “while they could take her out of sports, they can not take sports out of her.” While many of their relatives said it wouldn’t be appropriate to send their daughter across countries for a sport that “didn’t suit girls,” Fiza’s father stood by her. He let her chase her dream.
🐎Today, Fiza is part of Thailand’s Bangtao MMA team.“I wake up, pray, train; that’s the cycle daily,” says the dedicated sportswoman. Once or twice a year, she visits home in Srinagar. The rest of the time, it’s all work, 14 hours a day, 98 hours a week.
🥂“I’ve always been aggressive, but this sport reshaped that energy. It taught me discipline, restraint, and self-control,” she says. And it shows. She carries a quiet intensity. When she speaks, her words are measured and precise.
⛦“Martial arts is more than just a sport,” she adds. “It’s self-defence. You don’t need a man to protect you when you can do it yourself.”
🐟Fiza is one of the few Kashmiri women making a name in sports. Across the world, as women continue to fight against the stereotype that combat sports are only for men, for a female athlete from a conservative place like Kashmir, the battle isn’t just in the ring. It is a constant clash between passion and propriety.
✃“It’s easy for people here to dismiss you, to say what you do is against religion,” Fiza says. A hijab-wearing athlete, she recalls how someone once told her, “Her hijab doesn’t make her work halal (lawful).” Her response? “Okay.” She refuses to let random men define her faith.
🦋“It will never happen that everyone likes what you do. There will always be criticism,” she says. “But sports builds the mental toughness to rise above it. You just keep working hard - until people grow tired of judging you.”
🍸While some see her as ‘too modern’ in Kashmir, she says, when she travels abroad, she’s admired for holding on to her roots. “When people see me in hijab, they’re curious to know what keeps my faith and my sport so closely tied.” In fact, one well-known sportswear brand customised a hijab for her - designed exactly the way she wanted - and later added hijabs to their collection.
♔As she proves herself, the less her career choice is questioned and the more she is celebrated. Recently, her aunt gave birth to a third daughter. On video call, as Fiza’s mother admired the newborn, she offered words of comfort, saying, “The little angel is beautiful. Don’t take it to heart that it wasn’t a son this time.” To Fiza’s surprise, her aunt said: “Of course not! May God make her another Fiza Nazir.” It wasn’t the first time Fiza had heard something like this. In her neighbourhood in Downtown Srinagar, she once saw small girls pretending to be “Fiza didi,” while play-fighting. Some have her portraits pinned to their walls for motivation. While some send her messages - “We want to be you.”
🃏Looking back, as Fiza makes a name for herself in the sport she once had to fight to pursue, she has realised that her sister is her biggest supporter. "Everything I do now, in some way, is for her. I just want to make her proud, and the joy in her voice when she hears I've done well means everything to me." Of all the 25 countries she has competed in so far, she now follows a routine - one souvenir for herself, two for her sister.
🐻Currently recovering from an injury to her right shoulder, Fiza is ready to fight her way back and qualify for the IMMAF World Championships 2025. “It’s only my right arm that’s hurt; everything else is good to go,” she says.
Toibah Kirmani is a sub-editor at Outlook, based in Kashmir
(This article is a part of Outlook's March 11, 2025 Women's Day special issue 'Women at Work', which explores the experiences of women in roles traditionally occupied by men. An excerpt appeared in print as 'Women, Uninterrupted’)
