First Ever World Gay Boxing Championships: Kicks Off New Era In LGBTQ+ Sport

I recently spoke with Martin Stark, founder and organizer of the World Gay Boxing Championships.

Dirk Smith: Thanks for joining our conversation. Martin; let’s catch up! You just hosted the first World Gay Boxing Championships in February during World Pride Sydney. How did that go? Martin Stark: It was absolutely fantastic. We had a two-day amateur boxing competition February 17-18. Some highlights included having a trans man fight a cisgender man and win the world title in their division; two awesome drag queen MCs entertained the crowd and we had Kate McLaren, recent winner of the Australian Professional welterweight title, and Gary St. Claire, a two-time world boxing champion and hall of famer, there showing support. The event really was about breaking down the barriers and creating opportunities for the community. It was the culmination of three-and-a-half years of hard work over with in two short days.

DS: Fabulous! It was exciting to see it finally come to fruition after the Covid craziness and be so successful.

MS: It was the world’s first amateur boxing competition for the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. A key learning I took from it was the importance of building relationships, particularly within the boxing community, and especially the women’s boxing community. For example, I reached out to Boxing Australia in 2020 and within two weeks of my contacting them, their board voted to support the World Gay Boxing Championships and provided institutional guidance and support for everything we needed. Boxing New South Wales provided all the judges and referees, and then went one step further by providing coaches [transportation] on match day for anybody who was traveling who didn’t have their coach there. When I talk about grassroots change, this is the change that is happening. Whether it’s a national sporting organization, a state sporting organization or local level clubs, it’s about supporting the LGBTQ+ community and its allies to celebrate sport.

DS: I’ve noticed the grassroots level is really where we’ve been able to see a lot of change and progress, not just for LGBTQ+ athletes and LGBTQ+ sports, but how grassroots-inclusive sports like the World Gay Boxing Championships and other events have made a broader impact on our community in terms of making progress by building awareness and education for LGBTQ+ inclusion, not just in sports but within our society as a whole.

MS: We know participatory sport is a key intervention strategy that boosts mental health, physical health and overall wellbeing. Studies show that LGBTQ+ people participate in sport at only half the rate of the wider population. Now imagine removing that barrier so you now have 50 percent more people from a community participating in sport. Nelson Mandela said, “sport has the ability to unify.” We have great people within the LGBTQ+ community and awesome allies that are enabling inclusion, so I think the least we can do is get involved in sport or another activity and take a stand so that a peoples’ sexual orientation or gender identity doesn’t stop them from achieving their dreams.

DS: You’ve been very proactive in reaching out, contacting boxing’s national governing body and the state governing body; also contacting athletes, organizers and professionals from all over the world to help you find support to promote the World Gay Boxing championships. That made a big impact, too.

MS: One of the sad things is we didn’t get many people from overseas, especially boxers from Africa who were unfortunately unable to get a visa to come to Australia. We would have had awesome boxers from Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Gambia, some of whom participated at the Olympic and Commonwealth Games level. Unfortunately, people from South America, North America, Asia and Europe weren’t able to come as we had hoped. Hopefully, in two years’ time we’ll have a more diverse representation from the LGBTQ+ global community at the event. I was able to get statements of support from four of the five major boxing organizations. I do want to particularly highlight the World Boxing Council; they provided a statement of support, videos, visible allies from LGBTQ+ boxers and straight boxers over the last three-and-a-half years. They also issued a public statement last year saying they’re proud to be an LGBTQ+ ally and support the WGBC. And that statement wasn’t performative; it talks about bullying, harassment and persecution of LGBTQ+ people in various countries throughout the world which was one step further than just an empty statement. It was actually a broader statement talking about human rights.

DS: You mentioned how sport is an intervention strategy in a lot of ways – how being able to participate in a sport helps to build confidence, strength and resilience for LGBTQ+ people and other communities to stand up against bullying, hatred, and discrimination.

MS: In a discrete parallel to the championships, WGBC has been conducting an anonymous global survey on LGBTQ+ people and allies in boxing. We have 26 responses from people in 15 countries, including Singapore, Japan, Cuba, Brazil, America, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. It’s a snapshot survey and the results show that 92.3 percent believe homophobia is a problem in boxing; almost 90 percent the same for transphobia. And 40 percent have experienced some form of homophobia wherever they train and compete. Over half of the people in the survey are out or would feel comfortable coming out and almost two thirds have visible allies or signs of visible support where they train and compete. That tells me that in terms of LGBTQ+ individuals and boxing, there are people all over the world participating in the sport which is great for overall diversity. It also shows that there’s visible support, that LGBTQ+ boxers are able to find spaces where they are supported to train and compete. I believe it’s consistent with other studies on experiences with homophobia and transphobia in sport. I’m encouraged with the findings that there’s something to work with in the future.

DS: It’s good to have that outside support and allyship within the boxing community as well, especially because we can’t just do this ourselves. LGBTQ+ boxing is still relatively young; there’s organization for LGBTQ+ boxing right now other than the work that you’ve already done. So a lot of athletes are going to have to find their ability to train in non-LGBTQ+ specific spaces. Where can people connect with you and the World Gay Boxing Championships on social media websites?

MS: Check us out at www.wgbc.org.au and you can connect with our socials from there! •