Originaltext:
Queen of Swords
Fallon Fox is the world’s first trans MMA fighter. Deal with it.
"Don’t get overexcited,” trainer Joe Smith cautions Fallon Fox before slipping his sweaty palms into padded mitts. “I need you to focus,” he says. Fox grinds her left heel into the mildewed carpet below and unleashes 10 shin-cracking, rapid-fire kicks into Smith’s gloves, forcing the trainer to scuttle backward to absorb their intensity. “Nice!” Smith shouts over an electro remix of the Doors’s “Strange Days” blasting from the gym’s speakers. A $50 drop-in fee at an overcrowded LA Fitness center in suburban Miami has afforded the pair one last training session before Fox’s Friday night fight in three days at the BankUnited Center in Coral Gables, Fla., on May 24.
Later, booted from the mirrored weight room by an evening Zumba class, Fox and Smith squeeze into the only open space inside the clogged gym: at the lone punching bag by the bathrooms. Floppy men with pink skin, women shrink-wrapped in neon, and soggy teenagers dazed by their Apple gadgets on their way to the toilets have to leap and dart out of Fox’s way as she charges at Smith, hissing through her teeth, with a flurry of precise, thwacking jabs. A gaggle of pubescent boys, slick with sweat and sebum, clump together about 10 feet away from her, peering and whispering.
Later, booted from the mirrored weight room by an evening Zumba class, Fox and Smith squeeze into the only open space inside the clogged gym: at the lone punching bag by the bathrooms. Floppy men with pink skin, women shrink-wrapped in neon, and soggy teenagers dazed by their Apple gadgets on their way to the toilets have to leap and dart out of Fox’s way as she charges at Smith, hissing through her teeth, with a flurry of precise, thwacking jabs. A gaggle of pubescent boys, slick with sweat and sebum, clump together about 10 feet away from her, peering and whispering.
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