Fallon Fox
Fallon Fox is an American retired MMA fighter. She is the first openly transgender athlete in MMA history.
Early life
Fox was born in Toledo, Ohio. She recalls struggling with her gender as early as age five or six. As a teenager, Fox believed she may have been a gay man, but learned the term transgender at the age of 17. Fox continued living as a heterosexual man and married her then-girlfriend at the age of 19, when the latter became pregnant with their daughter. Fox then joined the US Navy to support her new family and served as an operations specialist on the USS Enterprise.After leaving the Navy, Fox enrolled at the University of Toledo, but dropped out after ongoing psychological stress from her unresolved gender issues. After leaving college, Fox worked as a truck driver in order to afford sex reassignment surgery. She moved to Chicago, Illinois, with her daughter. In 2006, she traveled to Bangkok, Thailand, to undergo gender reassignment surgery, breast augmentation, and hair transplant surgeries at Bangkok National Hospital.
Mixed martial arts career
Fallon Fox came out as transgender on March 5, 2013 during an interview with Outsports writer Cyd Zeigler and Sports Illustrated, following her two initial professional fights in the women's division. Controversy swelled over confusion with the California State Athletic Commission and Florida's athletic commission over the licensing process Fox chose to complete in Coral Gables. After publications shed light on the licensing procedure and Fox's coming out many commentators brought up the issue of whether a woman who was assigned male at birth should be able to fight in women's divisions in MMA fighting.UFC color commentator and stand-up comedian Joe Rogan opposed Fallon Fox receiving licensing, saying, "First of all, she's not really a she. She's a transgender, post-op person. The operation doesn't shave down your bone density. It doesn't change. You look at a man's hands and you look at a woman's hands and they're built different. They're just thicker, they're stronger, your wrists are thicker, your elbows are thicker, your joints are thicker. Just the mechanical function of punching, a man can do it much harder than a woman can, period."
Due to controversy and the licensing procedure CFA co-founder Jorge De La Noval, who promoted Fallon's fight on March 2 in Florida, postponed Fox's April 20 fight. However, De La Noval later stated his organization will not "turn our backs on her... As long as she's licensed, she's always welcome in our promotion. We stand behind her and we give her all of our support." Fox claimed in her video interview with Cyd Zeigler to be within the rules of organizations like the International Olympic Committee for postoperative transsexuals and wishes to continue fighting in MMA.
On April 8, 2013, Matt Mitrione, in an appearance on The MMA Hour, said that Fox was "still a man", and called Fox an "embarrassment" and a "lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak". UFC "was appalled by the transphobic comments" he made, and, referring to itself as "a friend and ally of the LGBT community", immediately suspended Mitrione, and fined him an undisclosed amount. The next day Fox issued a response stating that Mitrione "personally attacked me as a fighter, as a woman, and as a human being".
Whether or not Fox possesses an advantage over cisgender female fighters was a topic on the April 2014 edition of HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.
In an interview with the New York Post, former UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey stated she would be willing to fight Fox, saying "I can knock out anyone in the world", although she believes Fox has male bone density and structure, leading to an unfair advantage. In an interview with Out, Rousey said: "I feel like if you go through puberty as a 'man' it's not something you can reverse.... There's no undo button on that." UFC president Dana White claimed that "bone structure is different, hands are bigger, jaw is bigger, everything is bigger" and said "I don't think someone who used to be a man and became a woman should be able to fight a woman."
During Fox's fight against Tamikka Brents, Brents suffered a concussion, an orbital bone fracture, and seven staples to the head in the 1st round. After her loss, Brents took to social media to convey her thoughts on the experience of fighting Fox: "I've fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did that night. I can't answer whether it's because she was born a man or not because I'm not a doctor. I can only say, I've never felt so overpowered ever in my life and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right," she stated. "Her grip was different, I could usually move around in the clinch against other females but couldn't move at all in Fox's clinch..."
Eric Vilain, the director of the Institute For Society And Genetics at UCLA, worked with the Association of Boxing Commissions when they wrote their policy on transgender athletes. He stated in Time magazine that "Male to female transsexuals have significantly less muscle strength and bone density, and higher fat mass, than males" and said that, to be licensed, transgender female fighters must undergo complete "surgical anatomical changes..., including external genitalia and gonadectomy and subsequently a minimum of two years of hormone replacement therapy, administered by a board certified specialist. In general concurrence with peer-reviewed scientific literature, he states this to be "the current understanding of the minimum amount of time necessary to obviate male hormone gender related advantages in sports competition". Vilain reviewed Fox's medical records and said she has "clearly fulfilled all conditions." When asked if Fox could, nonetheless, be stronger than her competitors, Vilain replied that it was possible, but noted that "sports is made up of competitors who, by definition, have advantages for all kinds of genetics reasons". Fox herself responded to the controversy with an analogy comparing herself to Jackie Robinson in a guest editorial for a UFC and MMA news website:
The documentary Game Face provides an inside look into Fox's life during the beginning of her MMA controversy.