Fallon Fox is an American MMA fighter, and she is the first openly transgender fighter in MMA history.
Fox recalls struggling with her gender as early as five or six years old. As a teenager, she believed she may have been gay, but realised she was transgender at the age of 17. Despite this, Fox continued living as a straight male and married her then-girlfriend at the age of 19, when the her girlfriend became pregnant with their daughter. Fox then joined the US Navy to support her new family.
After leaving the Navy, Fox enrolled at University, but dropped out because of ongoing psychological stress from her gender identification issues. After leaving college, she worked as a truck driver to earn some money for sex reassignment surgery. In 2006, she travelled to Thailand to undergo gender reassignment surgery, at the Bangkok National Hospital.
During Fox’s fight against Tamikka Brents, Brents suffered a concussion, a broken eye socket, and seven staples to the head in the 1st round. After her loss, Brents commented on the experience of fighting Fox saying: “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”.
Joe Rogan came out in strong opposition when Fox receiving licensing, (and possibly with good reason, as discussed above). Rogan stated “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.”
Despite the serious injuries Brents suffered during the fight, she made a full recovery. Their fight was a few years ago, and Fox still continues to fight to this day
