World Boxing Council Plans For 2023 Trans Boxing

Mauricio Sulaiman recently revealed that the WBC plans to create a new category for boxers in the near future. Although competitive sport participation by transgender athletes has been scrutinized of late, Sulaiman pledges that the safety of fighters competing for WBC titles would in no way be compromised by the woke move.

Although there are already men’s boxing and women’s boxing categories, the mainstream acceptance of transgenderism in recent decades somehow creates market conditions that allow for such a possibility in fight sports. It’s a confusing landscape of pronouns and nuance; are trans athletes competing against men? Are trans athletes competing against women? Are trans athletes only competing against other trans athletes? 

Are trans men going to be competing against women? WBC President Mauricio Sulaimon insists that won’t be the case.

But another female champion, Susie Ramadan, tells a different story:

For the vast majority of people, this doesn’t make any sense; there are biological divergences in the physical mechanics of the bodies of men and those of women. In non-contact sports, this is egregious enough, but in combat sports, biological men competing against biological women is wholly unacceptable.

It isn’t shade to say that a person who was biologically born a male and lived in a male body his entire life is conditioned in a number of ways. Since puberty, his body has been showered with testosterone, increasing his bone density, shoulder width, and jaw width. Also fortified by this naturally occuring hormone in his body are the muscles, the tendons, and ligaments. These changes to the body take years, with most biological males reaching their peak in their thirties.

Let’s think about that for a second: reaching puberty at around 14 and reaching 30 means you’ve been mainlining aggression juice for sixteen years. Afterward, going through the various treatments and methods for transitioning a male lifestyle into that of a woman might diminish your maximum potential athletic performance, especially among other biological males.

But among biological females, the long term effects of your 16 years of testosterone doping can’t be balanced by a short time on an experimental transitional hormone therapy.

Freakshows In Boxing

Casual acceptance and fan apathy toward regrettable matchups tend to open the door to all kinds of carnival attractions in professional boxing. This isn’t some new phenomena; before Jake Paul tried to convince anyone he was a legitimate professional boxer for those strange few months, popular professional fighters would often showcase their wares on opponents with unorthodox skill sets.

Slightly excepted recently in the case of Stephen Fulton Jr. vs. Arnold Kegai; Kegai was originally trained as a Muay Thai fighter, and transitioned to boxing relatively late. Although the toughness he displayed against the virtuosic Fulton was admirable, at times the tactics themselves were, ultimately, inappropriate for a boxing match.

Even Muhammid Ali, The Greatest Of All Time, fought a wrestler in an exhibition; the inimitable James Toney knocked out Tim Silvia in a cagematch, and the great Clarressa Shields fought professionally under mma rules. Of course, there was the Freakshow Fight Of The Century: Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor.

In years past, a select few veteran prizefighters could make a temporarily comfortable living off of the marketability of their names; not their fading fighting abilities. Some of the most famous fighters get to practically choose opponents to showcase themselves against, sometimes at no significance to their official rankings. There even used to be extremely competitive exhibition matches between active pro boxers, sometimes simply to settle personal grudges. Although it seems like that kind of thing wouldn’t happen today with any of the names you’d recognize, it’s actually still something we’re lucky enough to witness. Non-title competitions can be some of the most exciting matches in the sport of boxing, even with no official rankings on the 

The Dangers Of Boxing

With advances in medical science, the dangers of boxing to the fighters in the ring have become more visibly documented. Despite what the promoters and networks say, the tendencies for human bodies appear sufficient for combat to the flawed minds of the inhabitants is no proof that we were designed to fight. The hands aren’t meant to be balled into fists and hurled about as tethered projectiles. The head isn’t meant to absorb repeated, targeted kinetic shocks. 

The body was never meant for beating on.

And, contrary to the narrative of most publications and networks, the human body and mind are simply incapable of fully recovering from some traumas. No matter who you are, you can only take so much before you can’t take any more. They say that every fighter knows when they can’t fight anymore; but tragically, many don’t. Due to any number of factors, there are too many prizefighters that keep pushing past this point and risk heartbreaking disasters.

These dangers are just those endured by male fighters and female fighters in their respective sports. Sulaiman’s willingness to entertain contests between trans athletes belies a willingness to heap another level of subtle danger upon the heads of fighters; a level that would likely be obfuscated and contorted before most casual fans of boxing even hear the story and get a chance to forumlate an informed opinion.

Besides the inherent dangers of fighting another trained human being, there’s now the spectre of gender (mis)matches. A shameful move by the WBC. Why would they do it?

Men vs. Women Boxing Matches

Clarressa Shields is the Greatest Woman Fighter of all time. She’s a fighter that beat everyone at their weight class, and moved to conquer champions in any others she can fit into. If the rounds were a standard 3 minutes instead of 2, she’d probably have a lot more knockouts. She can box, she can brawl, she can slip, and she’s an excellent counterpuncher. She spars dudes, for fuck’s sake; and she cleans up pretty good too.

She’s been so dominant in her career that many assume that she’d be competitive boxing against men. If the weights were somehow adjusted for, some of these assumptions might be right. With, say, a 25 lbs. weight disadvantage, a gender match with middleweight Claressa Shields vs a 135 lbs. Conor McGregor, for instance, would be hilariously entertaining, and probably fairly competitive in some respects.

Of course, dehydrating down to 135 lbs. and climbing into the ring against a technically sound, sharp puncher could be hazardous for McGregor, but  let’s not forget the premise of this hypothetical scenario; that biological men can now compete in boxing against biological women. 

What do you think: if there’s no danger for the man, is there really a point in entertaining gender matches – besides seeing a women get beat up?

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