Remember the transgender woman Fallon Fox who fought women in MMA bouts? Well this case is different. We will be seeing an inetresting fight at MMA organisation Mr. Cage 34 in Manaus, Brazil: a transgender woman vs a male fighter.

Anne Varieto, 21, is a BJJ brown belt under Team Zenith in Manaus and is a state champion in Brazil. She has been training BJJ for 14 years and has won competitions as a woman against men. She changed intoa woman a few years back  and took a few months break from Jiu-Jitsu. When she went back to training, her teammates didn’t recognise her  and were very surprised but they eventually accepted and supported her.

She then competed in Jiu-Jitsu against men and won many tournaments to the surprise of the crowd who were wondering why a woman was allowed to compete with men.

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.”

About competing against men in Jiu-Jitsu:

”When I entered the mat to compete, they always thought I was in the wrong category, asked for documents and everything,” she said. “My opponents and their teams always said ‘You’re fighting her? Ok, this is going to be easy.’ Every time I won, they would come up to me and apologize. I kept competing and winning tournaments, and people started to respect me.”

Varieto will probably be weaker than she was as a man, due to her therapy:

”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.”