Last year a two-day amateur boxing competition was held in Sydney, attracting participants and spectators from all over the country and the world. Setting, WorldPride; The event is the first Gay World Boxing Championships.
The competition brought together members of the LGBTQ+ community with allies and the country’s top judges, as well as boxing champions Gairy St Clair and Kate McLaren, thanks to the support of Boxing Australia and Boxing NSW. It was the brainchild of Martin Stark and the culmination of years of work to combat homophobia in sport and create an international LGBTQ+ boxing competition, following the sport’s exclusion from the Gay Games.
Stark is now going global; He is taking WGBC to the US in June and wants to work with other combat sports to increase efforts to combat homophobia. Thanks to the abundance of LGBTQ+ leagues and clubs in the US, support for hosting WGBC in Chicago has been overwhelming; But you don’t have to look far to see how homophobia remains in the industry.
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Stark says the recent outbursts of UFC fighter Sean Strickland and the lack of public condemnation from others in mixed martial arts show there’s still a long way to go.
“When there’s no one saying this is unacceptable, you’re signaling that gay men are subhuman in some ways,” he says. “And this language of hate is not being challenged enough… What is the message to the community? Is homophobia now acceptable behavior? What’s next?”
Stark says the more he sees homophobia in combat sports, especially in high-profile and influential competitions like the UFC, the more he wants to “intervene and speak out” because he knows it doesn’t align with the values of the vast majority of fans and participants.
“The upside of taking action against homophobia is growing the sport,” he says. “Getting more women into the UFC, into mixed martial arts, growing the fan base with millennials and Gen Z… getting more young people into gyms where all gym owners can grow their businesses with a segment of the market that may feel left out.
“I think in the long run [homophobia] It hurts the sport, it hurts the brand. “This is a long-term risk.”
What has driven Stark to shift his life’s focus to advocacy and WGBC is the knowledge that homophobia, and even a lack of visible support for participation, actively discourages people from participating in combat sports, meaning they miss out on the mental and physical benefits they offer. .
“[Sport] “It also offers an important social connection whether you are a participant or a fan,” he says. “Sport does this in a very universal way and that’s why it’s important that events like the World Gay Boxing Championships are still held.
“I want to get onto the stage where LGBTQ+ people are more visibly represented in boxing and other combat sports,” he says. “So people no longer feel like they have to reveal themselves; they can just be themselves and be supported no matter where they are in the world.”
One of the fighters who stepped into the ring at the first WGBC at Sydney WorldPride was Sze Sze Rowlinson, a professional Muay Thai fighter who had to take a break from her main sport following an ankle injury sustained in a motorcycle accident. This fight was his first since the accident a year earlier, and looking back he realizes it was also important for another reason: It was the first time he had allowed his identities as a fighter and a gay person to merge.
“I felt like this had to happen in some weird way,” he says. “I’ve never actually outwardly supported being some kind of gay warrior [before the WGBC]. I was always trying to say, ‘I’m a warrior.’ Pass through [martial arts] Space, my identity, my sexual orientation, or whatever, never really came up.
But in the midst of his injury recovery, that started to change. Missing being able to connect with people in the gym, Rowlinson began reflecting on the benefits Muay Thai and martial arts had given her over the years (confidence, lessons, friends) and realized that, unlike many team sports, when all that was stripped away were the same support networks to help you get through no.
That’s why he founded the Queer Combat Collective (QCC), a group that can not only provide support to people already involved in martial arts, but also encourage members of the LGBTQ+ community to quit when they previously thought that wasn’t the case. It’s not a safe space for them. Rowlinson wants to help make gyms more inviting, as well as organizing some “come and try” events.
“Most gyms I go to are pretty friendly,” he says. “But they’re very busy, they can be very loud, and a lot of them are geared towards people who want to spar or compete, and what I’m trying to do is get people on stage before that.
“I’m trying to create a space where people can be comfortable giving some sort of health and wellbeing activity before…using it as a physical practice rather than coming with all these connotations of being hyper-aggressive or having to fight. end.”
When Rowlinson started QCC, she didn’t want to be the face of it, but she realized that if she wanted people to engage with the group, she couldn’t do it anonymously.
“I had to come out of my own shell…” he says. “[I had] agreeing to take that step and say, ‘Okay, this is me, I’m going to promote this as part of my identity – I’m a warrior but I also run this Queer Combat Collective thing.’ “This is something new for me.”
And the invitation from Stark to become part of WGBC was “perfect timing” for this change. “This was a really interesting turning point for me personally because it was the first time I felt like my identities were coming together.”
While Stark builds inclusivity at the professional end of the scale, Rowlinson sees her work in grassroots martial arts as an important link in the chain; It gets more people through the door in the first place.
“Not everyone wants to be a fighter, but unless you get involved and get a taste of it, how do you know it’s something you want to pursue,” he says. “You can’t be what you can’t see, and it’s a similar cycle.”