New Zealander weightlifter Laurel Hubbard identified as a man named Gavin until she was 35 and competed against men before coming out as transgender in 2013, after which she began to compete against women (pictured on day five of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games)
Nicola Adams is a British female boxer who won the flyweight Olympic gold medal at both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Games.
She was also World and European Champion.
Adams is 5ft 4in tall and weighs 51kg.
By contrast, I’ve never been a boxing champion, though I stepped in the ring for a televised round with Manny Pacquiao, sent Mike Tyson fleeing in an impromptu CNN studio sparring session (it happened, check YouTube) and knocked out Lennox Lewis from Celebrity Apprentice USA.
But I’m 6ft 1 tall and weigh 101kg, and as the eldest of three brothers, I like to think can take care of myself when it comes to a scrap after many years of bruising practice in my youth.
This week, Adams challenged me to an exhibition bout on Twitter.
I thought she was joking but it transpired she was deadly serious, instructing her management team to follow up with a formal invitation which suggested our fight take place at Arsenal Football Club’s Emirates Stadium in London in front of 60,000 spectators, with lucrative broadcast and streaming rights helping to raise millions for charity.
For a mad moment, I nearly agreed.
This could be the new Bobby Riggs v Billie Jean King sporting battle of the sexes, screamed my temporarily deluded mindset.
But then I thought about it more carefully and realized it would be utterly ridiculous.
The woke brigade loathe me enough as it is - can you imagine the reaction if I started trying to repeatedly punch a younger (Adams is 38, I’m 56) black woman half my size on TV?
Meghan Markle’s sensitive little spleen would self-combust in fury as she choked on her kale smoothie in California.
Nicola Adams is a British female boxer who won the flyweight Olympic gold medal at both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Games (pictured in 2018 during the Interim WBO World Female Flyweight Championship)
This week, Adams challenged me to an exhibition bout on Twitter
And of course, there would be a very strong chance that after I landed a blow or two, Ms Adams would then pound me into humiliating submission because she’s a highly trained pugilist and I’m a middle-aged bloke whose last fight was 17 years ago when a TV presenter named Jeremy Clarkson whacked me in the head at an awards ceremony.
But the proposition made me think.
Imagine if Nicola had to get in the ring with an actual professional male boxer with my kind of stats?
For example, the aforementioned Mike Tyson is 54, weighs around the same as me, is a bit shorter, and has been doing some exhibition bouts.
Would Nicola Adams challenge him to a fight?
No, of course not.
What about with Floyd Mayweather, who is only 6kg heavier than her?
Again, of course not, despite the far smaller size differential.
Adams would know that getting in the ring with either man would be tantamount to potentially signing her own death warrant.
That’s why men and women compete separately at almost every sport - because men are built more powerfully than women, enabling them to be stronger and faster.
That’s not me being ‘sexist’, it’s just an unarguable biological fact.
The Olympics motto is ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ which is Latin for ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger.’
It’s what the whole Olympic dream is predicated upon – pitting the world’s best athletes against each other in the ultimate test of physical and mental sporting excellence.
But that dream only works if it’s fair and equal. That’s why I detest the odious drugs cheats who use illegal methods to beat clean opponents.
If men competed against women, very few women would ever win an Olympic medal again.
Yet at this year’s Olympics in Japan, it’s just been confirmed that a transgender person will compete for the first time.
New Zealander weightlifter Laurel Hubbard identified as a man named Gavin until she was 35 and competed against men before coming out as transgender in 2013, after which she began to compete against women.
Now 43, she became eligible for the Olympics in 2015 when the International Olympic Committee changed its rules to allow transgender athletes to compete as a woman if their testosterone levels are below a certain threshold.
I’ve never been a boxing champion, though I sent Mike Tyson fleeing in an impromptu CNN studio sparring session (pictured)
But many experts have argued this creates a totally unfair playing field because it doesn’t account for the superior bone and muscle density that
