Wearing red lipstick and a pink sports bra, Nong Rose trades blows with her twin brother in a Thai boxing gym, preparing for a foreign debut that will make her the first transgender fighter to enter the ring in France.
A few weeks ahead of the Muay Thai match in Paris, the 21-year-old is training hard in central Thailand’s Chachoengsao Province, with her brother as sparring partner.
Boxing is part of the siblings’ DNA — they learned how to jab, cross and kick from their uncle, a professional Muay Thai fighter, who started teaching them the basics when they were eight.
Photo: AFP
“Since [we were] little ones, we used to fight... but she was always stronger than me,” said Nong Rose’s brother, Somrak Polchareon.
In the eyes of the Thai government, Nong Rose is a man named Somros Polchareon, but she has always felt like a girl and started dressing like one at the age of 14.
In life as in the ring, where she competes against men, finding her place has not always been easy.
“When I started fighting [as a girl], I was afraid that people would not accept me,” she said, wiping away sweat after a feisty round of training.
While Thailand has a reputation as a free-spirited haven for queer people, discrimination abounds outside of nightlife and entertainment venues.
The boxer said her male opponents were initially rattled — or even angered — by her appearance.
“In my village everyone knew me so it was easy, but outside the city, some boxers looked at me wrong and said that trans people could not win,” she said.
Many transgender Thais say they are treated like second-class citizens in a nation where changing genders was considered a mental illness by the military as recently as 2012.
The practice is still not legally recognized, causing headaches for those trying to navigate medical care or bureaucratic processes.
Nong Rose, who turned professional after graduating from high school two years ago, pushed through the prejudice by racking up victories in the ring, winning half of her 300 matches.
Today, she is better known for her knees of steel.
“In combat, she always walks on you and hammers you with her knees,” said Chalongchai Meemindee, a 25-year-old boxer known as “Phetsuphan” who faced Rose in November.
“It’s good to have her in the ring, because it brings color and attracts viewers, especially foreigners,” he added.
Nong Rose is not the first transgender boxer in Thailand.
Nong Toom, whose story is captured in the 2004 film Beautiful Boxer, led the way, famously using her championship winnings to pay for a sex change.
“She was my role model,” Nong Rose said, adding that the fighter comes to support her at most matches.
For the up-and-coming boxer, the Paris competition on Saturday against formidable French Muay Thai champion Akram Hamidi is a chance to advance her career — and bring more attention to transgender fighters.
“It helps to promote the trans, to show that we are worth as much as the others. We are not weak,” she said.
Nong Rose says she plans to take her transition to the next step after her boxing days are over.
“Today, I do not take hormones, because it affects my condition and my boxing. When you are on hormones, you have much less energy, but as soon as I stop boxing, I do all the operations to finish my transformation,” she said.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
RSS