WASHINGTON, D.C. – Third District Kansas Congresswoman and former women’s Mixed Martial Arts fighter Sharice Davids voted against a House measure last week aimed at banning men from competing in women’s sports – but she’s yet to answer whether or not she’d have been willing to fight a man during her MMA career.
H.R. 734 declares specifically that it’s a violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs or activities, to allow those organizations to let males participate in programs or activities designated for women. The measure includes public elementary and secondary schools and colleges and universities.
The bill passed the U.S. House last week strictly on a party line vote with Davids voting in opposition, with 219 Republicans in favor and all 203 Democrats voting against. Analysts say the bill has almost no chance of passage in the Senate and President Joe Biden has said he’ll veto it. Kansas’ other three congressmen – all Republicans – voted in favor of the bill.
The Review posed the question to Davids’ office as to whether her support of men in women’s sports in voting against HR 734 would have extended to her own MMA fights during her career a decade ago – would she have been willing to fight a biological man? We have not yet received a reply from Zac Donely, Davids communication director.
The congressional action follows the passage of a bill this session in the Kansas Legislature that bans men from competing in women’s sports in the state at the high school and college levels. It was vetoed by Governor Laura Kelly but legislators successfully overrode that veto.
At 5’3” and 115 pounds, Davids had a 5-1 amateur record in strawweight women’s MMA and a 1-1 professional record before her last bout in 2014. All the fights were against biological females.
So-called “transgender” females – men who claim to be women – fighting actual female competitors in MMA has been an issue for much of the past decade, though only two fighters, the now-retired Fallon Fox and former U.S. Army Special Forces member Alana McLaughlin, are known to have fought organized larger-league MMA. Fox fought six bouts from 2012 to 2014 during the final years of Davids’ career, and was called out by one doctor for breaking the skull of one female opponent.