MMA organisation Mr. Cage 34 which will be held in in Manaus, Brazil, and will feature a unique fight: a transgender woman will face a male fighter.
Anne Varieto, 21, is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu brown belt competitor under Zenith Team and Manaus state champion who has been competing in BJJ since the age of 7. Her transformation from man to woman happened a few years ago. She took a few months off from Jiu-Jitsu, and when she came back, nobody recognised her in the gym. Although he teammates were shocked, they eventually accepted and supported her.
She then competed in Jiu-Jitsu against men and won many tournaments.
She will face male MMA fighter Railson Paixao.
Variato told MMA Fighting:
”I’ve been fighting jiu-jitsu for years, and I wanted to do something different. A lot of people in my team fight MMA already, and I wanted to do it as well.”
Varieto says that because of her therapy, she will actually be at a disadvantage:
”It’s completely different. Since we do hormonal therapy to become more feminine, the male hormone starts to disappear and don’t come back anymore after a while. I didn’t have the same strength in the gym after that, so that’s why I train so hard to be strong enough to fight men. I feel the difference in strength, and that’s why I work hard.”
This is a first time that a transgender woman faces a mann MMA (Fallon Fox was a transgender woman facing women in MMA) but similar cases have happened in Muay Thai:
