GLASGOW: Pakistan’s boxing history got a new opening chapter on Saturday as Fatima Zahra became the first Pakistani woman to win a medal at the Commonwealth Games, claiming bronze in the 60kg category at the 2026 Games here.
The medal is not just a personal triumph for the boxer from Sargodha — it is Pakistan’s first medal of the entire Glasgow edition of the Games, a distinction that adds extra weight to her achievement.
Fatima had already sealed at least a bronze after powering her way into the semi-finals, where she came up against Canada’s seasoned campaigner Mary Al Mehdiya. The Pakistani boxer fought hard but eventually went down in the last-four bout — a defeat that, in the end, could do little to dim the shine of what she had already accomplished.
Her road to the semi-finals had been anything but ordinary. Up against Lesotho’s taller and rangier Raleboh Segoete, Fatima came out swinging from the first bell, pressing forward with an aggression that gave her opponent no room to settle. The pressure paid off in dramatic fashion, with the contest waved off before the second round could even be completed.
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For a boxer who now captains the Pakistan women’s team, the medal is the product of a long and often lonely climb. Fatima laced up her gloves for the first time in 2018 and lost her very first official bout — hardly the stuff of legend. But rather than let that setback define her, she went back to the drawing board, sharpened her game, and eventually came to rule the domestic circuit, lifting the national women’s title five years running, from 2021 to 2025.
Her name first began travelling beyond Pakistan’s borders in 2025, when she picked up a bronze medal at the Islamic Solidarity Games — a result that marked her out as one of the country’s brightest boxing prospects. Glasgow has now taken that promise several steps further, making her the first Pakistani woman ever to stand on a Commonwealth Games boxing podium, a milestone many expect will send ripples through the sport back home and pull more young girls into gyms and boxing rings across the country.
Fatima has never hidden where her inspiration comes from — she has repeatedly named Mary Kom, the legendary six-time world champion and Olympic medallist, as the boxer she has modelled herself on. Before she flew out for Glasgow, she had spoken of wanting to do something no Pakistani had done before her in the ring. On Saturday, in a gym far from Sargodha, she did exactly that.
