{"id":38445,"date":"2026-07-02T12:37:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T16:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=38445"},"modified":"2026-07-02T12:37:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T16:37:29","slug":"shaolin-mma-combatant-aggam-bawa-captures-first-canada-fight-league-match-in-stoney-creek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/shaolin-mma-combatant-aggam-bawa-captures-first-canada-fight-league-match-in-stoney-creek\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaolin MMA combatant Aggam Bawa captures first Canada Fight League match in Stoney Creek"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Shaolin Martial Arts combatant Aggam Bawa defeated Gurmehak Turna in a three-round MMA bout to capture her first Canada Fight League match at the Winona Vine Estates in Stoney Creek last Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bawa\u2014who has trained at Shaolin Martial Arts in Aurora since 2021\u2014credited her training and coaching at the Mary Street facility as a key factor in her victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been great to train here\u2014it\u2019s a nice place to come to and throw myself into the training.  It\u2019s a healthy escape for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shaolin Martial Arts Coach Rocco Colarossi, who recently competed in an MMA tournament and will achieve Master\u2019s Level status at the end of the month, praised his prot\u00e9g\u00e9\u2019s progress, diligence, and talent as it manifested in Saturday\u2019s match:  \u201cAggam\u2019s been putting in a ton of effort and she\u2019s doing the prescribed work here and at other gyms where we\u2019ve sent her to get more specialized coaching.  She\u2019s fantastic and it showed in her match against Turna. She was dominant in the first two rounds of the fight and she won all three rounds. When Aggam got Gurmehak in a rear naked choke, from my view, it looked like the fight was over, but she was saved by the bell at the end of the second round.  In the third round, she stayed away from Aggam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bawa concurred with his coach\u2019s assessment of the match:  \u201cI beat this Thai boxer who\u2019d been training for ten years. She was really advanced in boxing, but by the end of Round 1, I was taking her to the floor where I had the advantage of grappling.  She was the superior boxer and I had to stay away from her, but when I got her in a choke hold, she was losing consciousness, and she was saved by the bell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ten-year King City resident and graduate of St. Anne\u2019s School in Aurora was pleased with her performance in the three-round match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust seeing my skills put together and seeing everything I\u2019ve worked for over the last five years in my first MMA match was satisfying.  Obviously, my striking and grappling abilities were the difference as well as reading the fighter and realizing how to get out of holds because of my training.  It felt good to say to myself \u2018I know how to get out of this one.\u2019 Finally, being able to use all my skills in one place was satisfying, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 18-year-old is heading off to New York University in the Fall to earn a degree in business, technology, and entrepreneurship and is \u201clooking forward to balancing my studies and maintaining my skills.  I want to get my blue belt while I\u2019m in the USA and I\u2019m looking forward to the gyms and the coaching styles as well as opportunities in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, before she starts her studies at NYU in September, Aggam Bawa has one last goal in Ontario:  \u201cBefore I leave, I want to have another MMA fight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Jim Stewart<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shaolin Martial Arts combatant Aggam Bawa defeated Gurmehak Turna in a three-round MMA bout to capture her first Canada Fight League match at the Winona Vine Estates in Stoney Creek last Saturday. Bawa\u2014who has trained at Shaolin Martial Arts in Aurora since 2021\u2014credited her training and coaching at the Mary Street facility as a key […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2026-07-02-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-a05","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-02 15:39:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38447,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38445\/revisions\/38447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}