A 21-year-old transgender woman will be making her MMA debut next month when she takes on Railson Paixao at Mr. Cage 34 in Manaus, Brazil.
Anne Veriato, who has been training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu since she was seven, said she was ready to give mixed martial arts a try while speaking with MMA Fighting.
”I’ve been fighting jiu-jitsu for years, and I wanted to do something different,” said Veriato. “A lot of people in my team fight MMA already, and I wanted to do it as well.”
Veriato has already won multiple jiu-jitsu bouts against men while fighting as a woman.
”When I entered the mat to compete, they always thought I was in the wrong category, asked for documents and everything,” she said. “My opponents and their teams always said ‘You’re fighting her? Ok, this is going to be easy.’ Every time I won, they would come up to me and apologize. I kept competing and winning tournaments, and people started to respect me.”
Veriato's fight was arranged by Mr. Cage promoter Samir Nadaf on the condition she goes up against a man.
”This [fighter] is a phenom in jiu-jitsu, and you look at [her], it’s a woman,” Nadaf told MMA Fighting. “They asked me for an opportunity. My answer was ‘I can give you an opportunity, but at Mr. Cage, men fight men, it doesn’t matter if you have a penis or not. If you were born a man, you’ll fight a man.’ [She] said ‘that’s exactly what I want.’”
The fight is slated for Mar. 10.