It’s ’bout time: Rudraneil Sengupta writes on Puja Tomar’s UFC win

The 28-year-old has become the first Indian to win such a bout. It’s not her win, she said, through tears, but a statement ‘for all Indian fans and fighters’.

Puja Tomar bellowed inside the octagon in Louisville, every muscle in her compact, densely fast-twitch-fibred body recruited in service of that primal scream, eyes bulging, veins popping, a scream to put fear and foreboding into the heart of her opponent, Brazil’s Rayanne Amanda dos Santos.

With great flurries of punch combinations and explosive kicks, Puja Tomar beat Rayanne Amanda dos Santos of Brazil at the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Louisville. (Getty Images)

On June 9, in the city made famous by Muhammad Ali, Tomar, the hard-punching 28-year-old from Budhana in Uttar Pradesh, made history by becoming the first Indian fighter to win a bout at the Ultimate