Thomas Page McBee on transitioning, sexuality and the boxing match that changed his lifeA few days before Thomas Page McBee was due to step into the boxing ring at Madison Square Garden for the first big fight of his life, his trainer, Danny Mangual, was scrolling through Instagram when he was pulled short by one of McBee’s posts. “He put something up about [Caitlyn] Jenner, when she transitioned, talking about, ‘Oh this is my idol,’” Mangual recalls one recent evening in Manhattan. “I thought, ‘OK, kinda weird.’” We are sitting in an innocuous Mexican bar eating stale tortilla chips. Mangual, who is short and compact, describes his dawning awareness as he continued scrolling through McBee’s images. “Then I come to a baby picture, a #ThrowbackThursday photo of Tommy, and I just said out loud: ‘Oh shit.’ I was bugging out because the whole time I was training this guy and he didn’t tell me anything.”McBee knew that he was not a girl before he knew almost anything elseWhen you’re preparing for a fight, you’re trying to rip somebody’s head off Continue readingread full article
