UFC Champion Israel Adesanya condemns Lia Thomas’ participation in women’s sports

Benny A. King

With every passing day the outrage over what’s transpired with Lia Thomas gets bigger. Just yesterday, Jorge Masvidal and Ben Askren weighed in on the topic.

Prior to the Miami outing, Masvidal was talking about a particularly hot topic in the world of sports, the case of swimmer Lia Thomas who competes against biological female athletes in spite of not being one.

“What sport is left that is still biological girls vs biological girls? Want to put my daughter in a sport that is still fair to her.” Jorge Masvidal wrote.

This is just the latest from Masvidal, he previously condemned Thomas during a video Q and A.

Another athlete who thinks it’s unfair is Masvidal’s longtime rival, Ben Askren. Askren also took to his Twitter account to slam Lia Thomas’ supporters.

“If you think Biological males should compete in [the] female division then you don’t understand sports!” Askren wrote.

And now Adesanya is following in their footsteps and questioning what the NCAA allowed to happen. Adesanya’s condemnation was evidenced by the sharing of the south park meme tied to the case.

In episode Board Girls (season 23, episode 7) South park tackles the topic of trans athletes competing with women. The episode features vice principal Strong Woman in town’s annual “Strong Woman Competition’ where the partitipants compete for a trophy.

Strong Woman (yes, that’s really her name) finds herself in a pickle once she is pitted against masculine challenger Heather Swanson who started identifying as a trans woman just two weeks prior.

Swanson was reportedly modelled to look like a cartoon version of Randy Savage.

Back to MMA, Stylebender is relatively progressive in terms of MMA having not praised masculinity the way a stereotypical UFC athlete has but this seems to be a bridge too far even for him.