ANITA KARIM: Like an Arrow Rising from the Hunza
- KARL R. De MESA
- Jun 10
- 6 min read
PAKISTAN’S FIRST WOMAN MMA FIGHTER IS SET TO COMPETE AT UFC’S “THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER” S34
BY KARL R. De MESA
The high altitude quiet that lives only in the Karakoram Mountains of Pakistan is the same kind of inner calm that teaches you to listen to your own heartbeat, especially when the air gets thin.
If you grew up in the Hunza Valley, in the northernmost territory of Pakistan, that silence becomes baseline, a default normal.
For Anita Karim, daily life growing up in Karimabad—a town in the Gilgit-Baltistan region sitting at 8,200 feet above sea level, 435 miles from the capital of Islamabad—framed the way she eventually found her way to the cage and to mixed martial arts.
The 29-year-old is today a feted member of Team Fight Fortress. Anita has not just conquered social perception and cultural shackles but, simply by stepping into the arena and racking wins, she has surmounted the gravitational weight of a narrative that shouldn't, by any traditional metrics of her homeland, even exist.
Soon, she’ll step off the margins of the sport to the mainstream limelight of women’s professional MMA.
Karim, known as "The Arm Collector," will be part of the women's strawweight roster for UFC’s longest running sports reality competition series, The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) 2026, Team Cormier vs. Team Bisping.
Season 34 of TUF is scheduled to officially premiere on 14 June and will be coached by UFC legends and title holders Daniel Cormier and Michael Bisping, this time with Men’s Bantamweight (135 lbs) and Women’s Strawweight (115 lbs) athletes competing.
The more compelling narrative about Karim isn’t just that she’s the first woman from a developing South Asian country who’s finally gotten her shot at the big league, but in what her ascent broadly represents. Alongside her brothers and coaches, Ehtisham and Uloomi, she helped nurture the development of Pakistan's early MMA infrastructure, earning a BJJ brown belt, and proving that competitors can emerge from locations rarely mentioned in the discussion about the high levels of international combat sports.
Having cousins and family deeply involved in martial arts has helped immensely.
“My brothers began training other athletes from a small patch of grass in a park, and now their gym is amongst the most sought-after places for MMA training,” Anita said in an interview with Al-Jazeera.
The Karims built a pathway for grassroots and professional MMA where none existed. Anita’s career specifically reads like a series of deliberate, blunt-force fractures against the prevailing status quo, breaking through the socio-cultural wall of Pakistani women in fighting.
“After becoming the country’s first female MMA fighter and earning a name for herself,” said her coach and brother Uloomi Karim (himself a Muay Thai and MMA titleist), “she’s inspired many girls to not only take up MMA as a career but also practice self-defense and stand up for themselves.”
MMA is a fairly young sport historically dominated by men. In a region where female participation in combat athletics faces inevitable cultural resistance, in a country where women’s sports are pushed to the margins of social acceptability, Karim has continued to move forward with stubborn determination. Every victory—she’s currently at a record of 6 wins and 2 losses—carried symbolic weight beyond the cage.
“I felt that in MMA, I had found a missing piece in life,” Karim stated in an interview with journalist Hafsa Adil.
After claiming regional wins, Karim’s horizon for opportunities eventually expanded, thanks in no small part to an alignment with funding from Tribe Diesel Diva.
Founded by former military officer and security specialist Beverly Roach, Tribe Diesel Diva operates under the banner of "Peace Through Sports," supporting athletes from marginalized communities around the world.
“Anita is a valued member of Tribe Diesel Diva for so many reasons! She has broken barriers, her presence promotes inclusion, and inspires people across cultural and gender divides,” said Roach.
Through Roach, herself a formidable trailblazer for women in the Canadian armed forces and the security consulting industry, Tribe DD saw in Karim a highly deserving recipient for a sponsorship that represented the caliber of "like-minded and like-hearted athletes" under the banner of Peace Through Sports.
“Anita has challenged traditional assumptions about who can participate in combat sports,” Roach continued. “Her career demonstrates that athletic achievement should not be limited by gender, aligning closely with a commitment to opposing sexism. She has not been loud and brash about this. Rather, she went about this as a professional athlete, quietly training and working hard every step of the way.”
Karim spent her formative training years far from the multi-million dollar facilities of the West, sharpening her tools at Fight Fortress in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Her coaches built her MMA game old school style, through a diet of relentless sparring, shark tank grappling, and a psychological resilience that’s commonly absent in luxury camps.
That underdog trajectory is a reason Karim's partnership with Tribe Diesel Diva is especially fitting, since the Tribe invests in athletes who face social and economic barriers.
“As a pioneering female MMA fighter from Pakistan’s Hunza region, she embodies the belief that sport can be a force for equality, respect, and peace,” Roach pointed out.
Sports as a vehicle for personal transformation and community development is a foundation of Tribe Diesel Diva. It sponsors fighters looking to ascend into next level success—among them Brazilian three-time ONE Flyweight World Champion Adriano Moraes and UAW Warriors veteran Youssef Wehbe from Lebanon.
Karim also embodies Tribe DD’s philosophy of using sports to inspire the youth who might want to follow in their heroes’ footsteps.
“[Anita’s] achievements provide a powerful example for girls and women who may not traditionally see themselves represented in professional sports. This reflects the broader message that opportunity and respect should be available to everyone regardless of gender,” stated Roach.
Through someone like Karim, the Tribe isn't just cultivating champions but also building a global network of role models who return to their communities to develop the next generation of talents.
Karim is notable not merely that she wins fights, but because she expands possibilities; like an entire demographic of South Asian women who have never seen themselves reflected in the golden sheen of a UFC championship belt or the life-changing kliegs of a Las Vegas cage.
Young girls in Pakistan, especially those in remote communities like the Gilgit-Baltistan, can now point to a woman from the Hunza who’s competing on international broadcasts to declare: that path exists. The distance from Hunza to Las Vegas is no longer impossible nor that far away.
A Pakistani woman’s inclusion in the 2026 season of TUF also comes at a volatile swing moment for the gestalt of international MMA. Combat sports is hungry for authentic narratives. TUF, whose grind is notoriously rigorous and demanding, represents one of the few remaining bastions as an unfiltered proving ground for aspirants to the UFC. Indeed, female athletes who went through TUF and eventually became champions, like Rose Namajunas and Carla Esparza, are marked by incredible toughness and work ethic.
Karim’s story is what happens when a community invests in an individual who refuses to bow to boundaries. Making it to TUF marks a generation of competitors from developing nations proving how talent is universal even when opportunities aren’t. Arriving at TUF is itself an historic moment. It declares: athletes from overlooked corners of the world deserve a place under the brightest lights.
“[Anita] brings visibility to a community that is often underrepresented in global sports,” explained Roach. “Her success highlights the value of diversity and inclusion, which resonates with anti-racist and anti-discriminatory principles.”
You may not be able to make out the mountains behind Karim right away, the rugged valley life of the Hunza that shaped her towards moments of elite competition, but the arrow loosed from the valley to rise unrestrained brings a sound like thunder resonating from those peaks, set to arrive in the UFC cage.
YOU CAN WATCH “TUF: THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER” S34 ON PARAMOUNT+ OR UFC FIGHT PASS STARTING 14 JUNE.
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