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A Carnival of Bad Sports Opinions
I'm sure by now everyone has seen the 43-second fight between Khelif and Carini. Full 43 seconds here and the money shot in slow-mo here.
What a ludicrous display. The bigoted opinion most supported by this farce of a fight isn't anything about Khelif's genital arrangement or chromosomes, it is that women's boxing shouldn't be in the olympics if this kind of crybaby shit is going down in there and no one is immediately calling it out. I spent some of my teen years being a weak, wimpy boxes (coincidentally at about that height and weight!) and this is just not how a fight goes when you realize that your opponent is much stronger than you and get scared when you realize you don't have a chance. You shell up and avoid leaving yourself open, you get on your bicycle and run away, you throw tentative tight jabs while keeping your hands up to keep them on the outside, if they get inside you immediately clinch to avoid further punishment. I was a teenager bad at boxing and working out with a lot of grown men much better than me, I was frequently in this position. What you don't do is what Carini did. You don't attack, extend yourself, drop your hands, get tagged, and tap out. I'm not an expert on Olympic boxing, but I've never in my life seen any male fighter, from the level of muay thai smokers up to the pros, surrender like that for no apparent reason. If a male fighter tried that, I would assume it was fixed.
Carini may have been outmatched, but she easily could have fought the round out defensively, run away, survived to the bell, and thrown in the towel between rounds. Minimal shame in that. I'd even be a little less judgmental if she truly took a dive and faked a "phantom punch" and just dropped to the ground to take a KO loss. But to give up not even halfway into the round after taking one punch, when she was clearly fully functional and unhurt? It makes a mockery of boxing. The majority of the felt force of that punch wasn't even relative to the strength of the boxer, it was the near perfect angle given by Carini with her hands low and her chin out.
One of Khelif's former opponents Irish boxer Amy Broadhurst has stepped up in her defense. In one of the funnier twitter exchanges I've ever seen, a random user asks Broadhurst how she would feel if she had to fight Khelif; Broadhurst has beaten Khelif in the ring multiple times in international competition. Here's footage of Khelif looking significantly less manly when someone has the guts to stand and bang. The mick keeps her hands up, gets inside, and punishes Khelif, who clearly gets gassed from the punishment taken from the stronger Broadhurst. This presumably settles the old North Jersey debate over whether Irish or Italians are tougher? Watching these fights I probably drop my opinion on women's boxing, Broadhurst is willing to tank a hit and get inside and go to the body hard, and wins the fight handily.
This is, in my mind, one of the great unsung tragedies of the rise of the trans movement. A woman, born female in a country where homosexuality and gender transition are illegal, raised as a woman, but born tall and with a face and body that is undeniably a bit masculine (especially by global and eurocentric standards), is now under constant suspicion of being secretly male. I have no idea what intersex condition Khelif might or might not have been born with, and no public statement has been made that confirms any testosterone testing. The presumption must be, absent testing, that a girl raised as a girl is a girl. There is probably an inappropriate level of testosterone at which a female competitor should be removed from competition or forced to suppress the level, but we still have yet to see evidence that Khelif is in that category. Further, there is a moral hazard created by normalizing edge cases, in that a competitor will accuse their opponent of gender-violations. Some of the more insane red-state laws allowed any parent of a competitor to require testing of any opponent, which I have to imagine would be abused constantly to try to demoralize one's competition by having a weird judge examine your vagina before the big game.
The takes on the "Defend Women's Sport" side of the debate have been degrading in quality, as TERFs like Rowling have risen in prominence. My problem with the pro-trans "there's no difference" side has long been that not one of them has any knowledge of or enthusiasm for sport. I feel like we're seeing more of that from the TERF side here, with the idea that Khelif is just SO MUCH STRONGER that Carini was forced to quit for her own safety being parotted across Twitter without any evidence. I'm embarrassed for my side of the debate, if this is made a serious test-case for trans bans it is going to harm the cause for reasonable restriction in sport.
At the end of the day, I don't really object to transwomen competing in women's sport, I object to them winning. If they lose, then clearly it was no big deal. It's only if they win that it presents a problem, we got the science wrong. Given that binary, it would benefit the trans movement if they avoided trans women in sport altogether. But alas, here we are, in the carnival of bad sports opinions.
ETA:
https://apnews.com/article/angela-carini-imane-khelif-boxing-63e9dbaa30f1e29196d4162c72c2babf
Poor girl. Doesn't deserve some fat asshole from Pennsylvania going off on her for something she says she regrets.
I have little sympathy for the inclusive side here . When Lucia Rijker fought a man it seemed like the gulf in power surprised both of them (the man was then emboldened and quickly finished her). I can see why it'd be demoralizing.
But it was noted that multiple people were warning Carini not to participate.
I can see how she was mentally defeated/checked out before she stepped in there. The punch just confirmed what she was being warned about.
Khelif is 37-9 with 5KO's, 41 women have gone the distance with her and nine have beaten her. She doesn't win an unusual amount for a top boxer or seem to knock people out at an exceptional rate. Khelif has a 13% KO Rate, the last woman to beat her, Broadhurst, has a 14% KO Rate. The idea that there is some massive gulf in power between her and other top women's boxers is not born out by the numbers.
Boxing is a combination of power and skill -- perhaps she (?) has been improving her skill level to the point where the power gulf becomes overwhelming?
I'd note that 'punching hard' is not necessarily as much of a focus in Olympic boxing, particularly the women's division I'd imagine -- winning on points is really the dominant strategy there, it's quite possible that a top female competitor is not used to taking a 'real' punch at all.
If only there were some way to figure this out like watching the fights.
Might be better to find somebody who's into women's boxing and ask them -- I don't really like it at the best of times myself, and wouldn't even know where to begin looking to see how this person was boxing three years ago or whatever.
The punch that scared the Italian off did look like a legitimately hard/well trained punch though -- maybe the Italian girl is bad at boxing and some other opponents don't leave themselves open enough to have something like that land, IDK. Presumably it's not the first time a (female) opponent landed their best punch on her though, given that she made it to the olympics somehow?
...I did watch the fights and offered analysis in OP...
I truly can't underrated why everyone is going off priors and theories and medical studies when we have the real thing right in front of us to be observed. It's like imagining German generals in 1916 still talking about the Schlieffen plan and the concentration of men/meter to carry on vigorous attacks.
Did you watch fights from 2-3 years ago to establish whether there's any difference in technique? I didn't see it in the OP.
Actually this gets at my main point of disagreement with your comments there -- everything you said would absolutely apply to a male boxer, but based on my impression of the little women's boxing I've seen at the olympics it's very possible that the Italian has never been hit that hard before -- which kind of throws your thesis out the window.
Have you ever had a woman hit you as hard as she can? IANAB, (and to be fair neither was she), but it's an absolute nothing IME; like, we could do this all day. Going from that to even an untrained male punch would be a shock to the system I figure.
Yes, I linked and summarized her fight against Broadhurst, unless that tape was taken down as well. I watched a few others, but that felt like too much linking for shit that it is readily apparent that no one watched, or possibly even read the summary of. Her fight with Broadhurst is representative, in that she is clearly the weaker fighter physically, getting bodied around the ring by Broadhurst.
I've only ever sparred with women, never gone full speed. But I agree with you: a man obviously punches much, much harder than a woman. ((I will say training has a big impact on how hard women hit pads, but that is of limited value)) Which is why it is obvious that Imane Khelif is not a man: Hermano Khelif would have been muscling her opponents around, battering their defenses with a brutal level of strength. If one watches boxing at the amateur level one can see the pattern of how a fight between a physically dominant but less skilled fighter goes with a more skilled boxer. It doesn't look like Khelif v Broadhurst.
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Yes but her opponent has been competing against women for years with good-but-not-great results and an 11% KO rate. There's ample proof she's not some insane worldbeating physical force.
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