WBC planning to introduce a transgender boxing category
WBC president Mauricio Sulaimán has said that the sanctioning body intends to establish a new transgender boxing category in 2023.
Boxing has thrown its last jab of the year and it has been a surprising one. The World Boxing Council (WBC) plans to introduce a new category for transgender fighters in 2023, according to the organization’s president Mauricio Sulaiman.
The sweet science is no stranger to the recent controversies raised in different sports regarding the fairness of allowing transgender women to compete against cisgender (not transgender) women.
Sulaimán recently said to The Telegraph that he is keen on using the at birth rule, which will only allow trans fighters to compete against each other if the athletes were born with the same sex.
‘In boxing, a man fighting a woman must never be accepted regardless of gender change. There should be no grey area around this, and we want to go into it with transparency and the correct decisions”, he said.
“We are going to put out a global call for those who are interested in 2023 and we will set up the protocols, start consultation and most likely create a league and a tournament”, Sulaimán added.
One of the most interesting examples in this regard is Patricio Manuel, a former five-time women’s US amateur champion before making his professional debut as a male boxer in 2018.
With the new WBC proposals, Manuel would only be able to fight another trans man who was born a woman.