Former UFC star and Strikeforce champion, Jake Shields, is setting out to make a bold statement about the world of combat sports.
Shields believes that if trans women in mixed martial arts can compete against cisgender women, then transmen should have the opportunity to face off against cisgender men as well.
With a determined spirit and a willingness to invest his own money, Shields has offered a substantial prize of $200,000 to any transman willing to step up and take him on in the ring.
Speaking exclusively to Inside Fighting, Shields expressed his desire to take on ten transmen consecutively, with no breaks in between bouts
. Despite his enticing offer, no one has accepted his challenge thus far, except for one individual who later turned out to be insincere.
“I’m ready to go back-to-back. I won’t back down from facing ten transmen one after the other, without any rest. Fight one, then the next, and the next… Unfortunately, none of them have accepted the challenge. In an attempt to make it happen, I even offered $200,000 from my own pocket, but still no takers,” Shields revealed.
“We had someone who claimed to accept the challenge, but it turned out to be fake. We reached out to them, and suddenly they changed their mind, saying they wanted to fight someone else on the same card. They acknowledged that the other matchup wasn’t as good as facing me. It seems like they were just using my name to gain relevance,” Shields added, expressing his disappointment.
Shields’s motivation behind this unique challenge is straightforward: he wants to expose the inconsistencies within the argument that transwomen should compete against cisgender women. He believes that such matchups are inherently unfair, as transwomen are biologically born male.
“I’m simply pointing out the hypocrisy of transwomen competing against women while claiming to be real women themselves,” Shields explained. “If they consider themselves real women, then why can’t I compete against them? I am willing to face the ten toughest transmen in the world, and I am confident I will defeat them all. The fact that none of them have accepted my challenge only reinforces my point. Meanwhile, trans women continue to seek matches against cisgender women.”
While Shields’s challenge was initially accepted by Mack Beggs, a trans man who gained attention in 2017 for winning the Texas girls’ 110 lb championship, the two haven’t been able to come to terms.