A successful start
Another exciting first – a man beats a woman in mixed martial arts.
Transgender mixed martial arts fighter Alana McLaughlin made a successful start to her career by choking out her opponent in the second round last night.
McLaughlin, who was born a man, was the first openly-transgender MMA athlete to compete in the US since 2014.
And having been rocked by opponent Celine Provost in the first of three scheduled rounds, McLaughlin fought back the second session to submit Provost by rear-naked choke.
In stepping into the cage, McLaughlin, 38, became just the second transgender woman to compete in the sport, following in the footsteps of Fallon Fox who was cageside in Miami.
Ah yes the footsteps of Fallon Fox, who broke a woman’s skull.
Before her bout, McLaughlin, a former member of the US Army Special Forces, said: “I want to pick up the mantle that Fallon put down.
“Right now, I’m following in Fallon’s footsteps. I’m just another step along the way and it’s my great hope that there are more to follow behind me.”
More more MORE men breaking women’s skulls. How progress we are.
How about the t-shirt, “End Trans Genocide.” Has trans genocide even begun?
Women shouldn’t be forced to take fights against trans women, and trans women shouldn’t be allowed to fight for women’s championships.
In this case though, the opponent agreed to the fight, knew what she was getting into, and apparently came close to winning by knockout in the first round.
The “cracked skull” / “broken skull” thing with Fallon Fox refers to a fractured orbital socket, which is a very common injury in combat sports, and which is as far as I can tell never called a cracked/broken skull except in this one case. The impression given, that nobody had their skull broken in mma but then a trans women broke a woman’s skull, is extremely misleading. This was one of thousands of cracked orbital sockets in combat sports.
Fallon Fox was unethical by fighting as a woman, not a trans woman, early in Fox’s career. But if trans women put themselves out there and women want to fight them, I don’t see any issues with it. It’s not the same as 10 women being in a race with 1 trans women, who wins, and the other 9 women didn’t agree to this.
Jfc.
Eventually the top female competition in many of these sports may drop out, and we’ll end up with a bunch of stunning and brave men fighting women who are fine with a 5th place finish and notable for their gushing respect for the Stunning and Brave. If so,it would be interesting to see how the Foxes-and- McLaughlins react. On the one hand, it’s easy wins against a lesser competition. On the other hand, they’re not beating the women who would matter, those who are seriously driven and would otherwise finish at the top. Choosing their reaction will be a career challenge for them.
How very simple of a solution, Skeletor. I’m not quite sure how declining a fight affects a fighter’s rankings and earnings potential, though. Don’t you think that a woman fighter would need to be cognizant of losing potential revenue if she refused to fight a man who claims to a transwoman.
I’m not “just asking” here. I’m truly curious if you have the answer to this.
I personally don’t think that female athletes should be put in that position because of some trans identifying male’s ego trip.
Alana began transitioning hormonally somewhere between 2007 and 2009 (assuming the source I am reading is written chronologically), after training for the US army special forces, and hence was the beneficiary puberty and military training conditioning as a male. He began training for MMA “a few months ago”, and was able to win at age 38. Granted, the victory was against a total unknown in the sport – no wins and one, two, or three losses depending on the source, no known age or height data anywhere so far, and one source doesn’t even know what she looks like – but still. That opponent has a fight record going back years rather than months.
I wonder what gave him the edge… determination? Yeah, and I bet the opponent was a lazy Karen.
Skeletor, I think you are disregarding the pressure a lone fighter with no name recognition must be under to play along.
If we want to “end trans genocide,” shouldn’t we make medical transition illegal?
We find ourselves again questioning what it means to consent and what constitutes free choice. In a world where all choices are free and informed, p’s decision to fight q should be permissible. However, the real world is a far cry from that. Considering how much the gender ideology movement has accomplished using little except social pressure, treating competitors’ choices to be unconstrained is an obvious mistake.
Not a great source but photos of both fighters standing together. While the woman is taller the trans woman is considerably more powerfully built.
https://www.jordanthrilla.com/post/transgender-mma-fighter-alana-mclaughlin-destroys-cisgender-female-celine-provost-in-mma-debut-causing-controversial-reactions/
This much I agree with. The rest not so much.
There have been MMA fights between men and women. In my limited exposure to the sport, I think they are “battle of the sexes” kinds of promotional events, rare compared to the single-sex events. I don’t know what kind of pressure female fighters are under to participate in such things. I’d imagine there’s more pressure to compete against another fighter in the women’s rankings, a sanctioned fight with ranking points or a title on the line, even when that opponent is actually male.
Skeletor:
As have many others, I’d like to point out that the opportunity costs in sports such as this can be significant. Choosing to refuse a fight could damage reputation in any number of ways. I struggle to believe that you’re not perfectly aware of this. Remember that the interests of the organisers/promoters/advertisers do not align with those of the fighters at all. Pressure is certainly intense and while we can only speculate about the validity of consent in this case, it is abundantly clear that coercion occurs; it would be the most wilful kind of disingenuous blindness to insist otherwise.
As for the broken skull, you have once again focused on the least relevant part. The injury itself is less important than Fox’ subsequent bragging about it. Here’s what he said:
Injuries happen, of course. In my brief martial arts career I broke a few noses and two people broke bones in their hands by hitting my blocks. I did not brag about it, though, and I did not enjoy it. And if those people had been women, I would not have been sickeningly triumphant about it, as Fox was. Fox entered the sport so he could beat up women. Breaking a woman’s skull obviously delighted him. This was not just yet another unfortunate injury suffered in a dangerous sport.
At its base, the problem is that people will pay good money to see other people fight in a win-lose situation. As any real fight is potentially lethal, there have to be rules to minimise the probability of death or serious injury as an outcome in a fight promoted and sold as a sport.
That creates incentives to cheat in order to get around the rules, particularly when serious money is involved; the horse shoe in the boxing glove sort of stuff. Men masquerading as women, under the convenient bullshit label of ‘transwomen’ is merely the latest iteration of that horse shoe inside the boxing glove; or more realistically, the donger and testicles inside the frilly panties.
The best solution would be to require transwomen to compete in the sex category according to sex as assigned to them at birth, which for chromosomal reasons could only be male or female. The second best solution would be to set up a separate category for transmen only and another for transwomen only. But they don’t want that, because they want to win. The worst would be to allow men to compete under whatever guise (eg drag queen) as women in women-only competitions.