Mauricio Sulaiman, President of the WBC agrees that trans sexuals have an advantage over other women boxers (photo by the World Boxing Council file)

Boxing A new world in 2024

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

A new boxing rule this year, 2024, by the national governing body for amateur/Olympic-style boxing, just codified a rule permitting male participation in the women’s division in its 2024 rule book. The policy is for a biological man who made “changes” and became a woman-transsexual to be able to fight biological women.

Here is the “hook”(to use a boxing term): Male boxers who transition to female are eligible to compete in the female category. These are the conditions. (1) To qualify for the female division, a man must declare his gender identity as female. (2) He must have undergone gender reassignment. (3) Done hormone resting for a minimum of four years after these procedures, and finally, (4) Must have met testosterone limits set by USA Boxing.

Controversial, to say the least, this could revolutionize boxing as we know it. However, not everybody agrees.

Mauricio Sulaiman, President of the WBC, acknowledged that trans athletes, identifying as women, have overwhelming male physical advantages that can overpower and threaten women.“In boxing, a man fighting a woman must never be accepted regardless of gender change,” he said. “There should be no gray area around this, and we want to go into it with transparency and the correct decisions. Woman to man or man to woman transgender change will never be allowed to fight a different gender by birth.”

Biological men who became transsexual are already competing in sports like swimming, whereas trans-athletes as Lia Thomas excel in swimming competitions against biological women; Thomas usually dominates and wins by large margins. But that is swimming, which is not a contact sport, but boxing presents a new dilemma. Because unlike swimming, in boxing, people can get seriously hurt.

The uncharted territory we are in when it comes to this topic it is way above my pay grade, as the saying goes, but it shows that, in this case, the boundaries of humanity are being seriously tested.

Happy New Year!

Amaury Pi Gonzalez does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com