Tony Bellew cuts through clutter of Imane Khelif controversy

The gold medal won by Algeria’s Imane Khelif in the women’s welterweight competition at the just-concluded 2024 Paris Olympic Games has brought a slew of ill-informed, hot-button-pushing critics out of the woodwork.

But she now has at least one new ally.

Khelif was born a woman, but she has faced a slew of accusations saying otherwise. She has been vilified by figures ranging from fellow fighters to International Boxing Association president Umar Kremlev to former U.S. president Donald Trump to, of all people, author J.K. Rowling. After having been cleared for Olympic competition and making a clear statement about her gender status in Paris – “I want to tell the entire world that I am a female, and I will remain a female,” she said – Khelif has filed a complaint with French authorities for the online harassment she has received, specifically on the social media platform X.

Khelif has also received her share of support – including from certain key corners. In an interview posted Wednesday with Instant Casino, former men’s cruiserweight titleholder Tony Bellew made it clear that he is among the advocates who backs Khelif.

“If you’re born a woman, you’ll want to fight against women,” Bellew told Instant Casino. “That’s very, very fair. I don’t care what your testosterone levels are, as long as she has proven she is a clean athlete – which she has – and she’s born a woman, she should be allowed to compete with women.”

Fairness in competition has been at the crux of the recent gender debate in sports – which has also been a tinder box for spreading misinformation and bigotry. Khelif was cleared by the International Olympic Committee to participate in the women’s competitions in Paris and Tokyo (2020), and the controversy surrounding her gender was driven only by a curiously timed press release from the IBA (a disreputable organization that was stripped of its Olympic boxing governance after the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games) and the virality of hearsay and hate on the internet.

The facts are clear. But it took too long and far too much wrangling to establish them.

“At first I was told it’s a man fighting women and I thought that can’t be possibly right – that wouldn’t be allowed,” Bellew said. “Then I saw the young girl on the news and she was in tears and, I’m told by all accounts, she’s born a woman and she is a woman, but she has male hormones as well.”

On that last point, the details aren’t entirely clear. Khelif was tested by the IOC, whose participation standards differ from those of the IBA. But she was allowed to compete in the IBA’s 2022 World Championships and was only disqualified from the 2023 worlds (based on the same testing standard as the previous year’s competition) after beating a Russian opponent. (The IBA has strong Russian ties and has been denounced by the IOC and others for its corruption.)

In any case, no conclusive evidence has been presented to suggest that Khelif is not, in fact, a woman. Moreover, she is not transgender, nor has she been found to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs. When figures such as Bellew – a former men’s world titleholder who has remained in the spotlight as a boxing commentator and a staple in the “Creed” movie franchise – can cut through the clutter to process those facts, perhaps others can be influenced to turn to critical thinking before resorting immediately to fire-and-brimstone judgment.

Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, has contributed to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be followed on X and LinkedIn, and emailed at [email protected].