Fallon Fox cannot wait to share her story with the world.
Fox, the first openly transgender mixed martial arts fighter, is working with Mark Gordon Pictures on a new biopic based on her career and life. Eight years after coming out publicly, Fox will now get a dramatized retelling of a story that dominated the sports world.
“It feels amazing. I feel like my story is finally going to get out there in a big way,” Fox told ET Canada. “I’m not sure how it’s going to run. Maybe it’s going to be informative, but it’s going to be entertaining and people are going to get a lot out of it.“
“I think that this is going to be a really incredible film given that the people who are involved with Mark Gordon pictures,” she continued. “These are the same people who are behind ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy ‘and that Steve Jobs biopic a few years back.”
Fox reached headlines everywhere after coming out as transgender in 2013 interviews with Outsports writer Cyd Zeigler and Sports Illustrated. It sparked an intense debate in MMA and the broader sports world about transgender athlete inclusion.
“A lot of prominent people were talking about a bunch of horrible things. The Joe Rogans, the Ronda Rouseys, the Dana Whites of the world,” she shared.
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“From what they said about me in the past, I could have just crawled up into a ball and given up. I could have just stopped competing, but I didn’t,” Fox asserted. “I kept competing and I kept talking about this issue and I’m going to continue to do it.”
Rogan, host of the very popular “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, backtracked a recent claim that healthy young people should not get a COVID-19 vaccine. Fox believes Rogan should be more careful about the subjects he discusses.
“No, he shouldn’t speak, especially on this issue that’s so important to transgender people and transgender people’s lives,” Fox asserted. “Just like coronavirus is important to people’s lives. He just brings up these things and just makes them up.”
Adding, “I think people should pay attention to what he said, that he’s not an expert. You know, he’s not an expert, so people should take what he says with a grain of salt.”
One big point of contention from Fox’s detractors was the idea that her bone density and genetics gave her an unfair biological advantage against opponents were assigned female at birth.
“People like to ask me about the science behind trans athletes, and I’ll tell you what I know, but it’s not like I’m pulling all this stuff out of thin air,” she said. “Nowhere in the tale of the tape is bone density ever introduced. Right? Nobody ever talks about bone density.”
“And there are bone density differences between men also and in women also. For instance. African-American women have more dense bones than Caucasian women do,” Fox added. “I don’t see any one saying that we shouldn’t have African-American women competing against cisgender women.”
Continuing, “Most of the time to have more dense bones than cisgender white men do. We never we never talk about this. And I think it’s just bogus for them to even bring up bone density in the first place. Things like that that people just bring out of thin air and just say our true, that [is what] we’re fighting against.”
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Fox retired from mixed martial arts in 2014 due to injuries with a professional record of 5-1. Although she still loves the sport, Fox admits the MMA community makes it hard for her to get involved.
“This is a challenging situation for me, my current relationship with MMA,” she confessed. “I still have a lot of passion for the sport. I like watching it. I want to get back into training and everything like that.”
“But a lot of prominent people haven’t recognized what I’ve done, like Joe Rogan and Ronda Rousey and all that,” she added. “So I don’t think the world of MMA is ready to have an intelligent conversation about transgender athletes, but I’m willing to have that conversation and I’m always willing to stand up.”
Her MMA career may have wrapped up, but Fox – whose life and career were a focus of the 2015 documentary “Game Face” – is welcoming her status as an advocate for transgender athletes with open arms.
“[I] feel honoured to be this person who is speaking for transgender athletes inclusion. Really honoured. I kind of want this.”
To learn more about Fox, follow her on her Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts.
