About 700g difference denied Suchika Tariyal a shot at MMA gold at Asian Games 2026
Suchika Tariyal was denied a chance to contest for gold at the Asian Games 2026 in Aichi-Nagoya after her semi-final with Singapore’s Hui Hoon Teo was resolved by a pre-fight weigh-in tie-breaker of about 700 grams; Tariyal nonetheless won bronze in the women’s 60 kg traditional MMA and became the first Indian to podium in the sport at the Asian Games.
The 36-year-old from Rohtak, Haryana used her judo background to take the fight to the ground against Teo, who relied on boxing to control the bout’s pace. Teo took the opening round, Tariyal responded in the second by taking her opponent down to level the contest, and the match proceeded to a one-minute overtime where Teo managed to keep Tariyal at bay.
India’s camp challenged the result and a review by a 10-member judging panel followed; the panel officially declared the bout a draw after the review. Asian MMA tie-breaker procedures were then applied, which the federation uses to produce a decisive outcome when judges return a tie.
The tie-breaker sequence examines warnings issued to each fighter, their in-fight advice, pre-fight weigh-in numbers, and, if required, post-fight weights before resorting to a referee’s vote. In Tariyal’s case the first applicable criterion settled the outcome: Hui Hoon Teo was about 700 grams lighter than Tariyal at the morning weigh-in, allowing Teo to advance to the final.
MMA Sports Federation president Nikhil Kunde confirmed as much to PTI, explaining that the tie was broken purely on the morning weigh-in numbers and that the decision pushed Suchika into the bronze-medal bout instead of a shot at gold. Tariyal showed visible disappointment and stayed off to the side rather than join the referee and her opponent for the formal announcement.
Tariyal made her professional MMA debut in 2017, then stepped away from MMA for seven years while competing in judo and jujutsu, winning a jujutsu world title in Heraklion in 2024. She returned to professional MMA in December 2024 with BRAVE Combat Federation and added Asian Championship bronze medals in Luzhou and Tashkent prior to her Asian Games podium finish.
The bronze in the women’s 60 kg traditional MMA category is India’s first-ever Asian Games medal in MMA, completing Tariyal’s return to the sport and securing a historic podium for Indian mixed martial arts.
