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Khelif is 37-9 with 5KO's, 41 women have gone the distance with her and nine have beaten her. She doesn't win an unusual amount for a top boxer or seem to knock people out at an exceptional rate. Khelif has a 13% KO Rate, the last woman to beat her, Broadhurst, has a 14% KO Rate. The idea that there is some massive gulf in power between her and other top women's boxers is not born out by the numbers.
Boxing is a combination of power and skill -- perhaps she (?) has been improving her skill level to the point where the power gulf becomes overwhelming?
I'd note that 'punching hard' is not necessarily as much of a focus in Olympic boxing, particularly the women's division I'd imagine -- winning on points is really the dominant strategy there, it's quite possible that a top female competitor is not used to taking a 'real' punch at all.
If only there were some way to figure this out like watching the fights.
Might be better to find somebody who's into women's boxing and ask them -- I don't really like it at the best of times myself, and wouldn't even know where to begin looking to see how this person was boxing three years ago or whatever.
The punch that scared the Italian off did look like a legitimately hard/well trained punch though -- maybe the Italian girl is bad at boxing and some other opponents don't leave themselves open enough to have something like that land, IDK. Presumably it's not the first time a (female) opponent landed their best punch on her though, given that she made it to the olympics somehow?
...I did watch the fights and offered analysis in OP...
I truly can't underrated why everyone is going off priors and theories and medical studies when we have the real thing right in front of us to be observed. It's like imagining German generals in 1916 still talking about the Schlieffen plan and the concentration of men/meter to carry on vigorous attacks.
Did you watch fights from 2-3 years ago to establish whether there's any difference in technique? I didn't see it in the OP.
Actually this gets at my main point of disagreement with your comments there -- everything you said would absolutely apply to a male boxer, but based on my impression of the little women's boxing I've seen at the olympics it's very possible that the Italian has never been hit that hard before -- which kind of throws your thesis out the window.
Have you ever had a woman hit you as hard as she can? IANAB, (and to be fair neither was she), but it's an absolute nothing IME; like, we could do this all day. Going from that to even an untrained male punch would be a shock to the system I figure.
Yes, I linked and summarized her fight against Broadhurst, unless that tape was taken down as well. I watched a few others, but that felt like too much linking for shit that it is readily apparent that no one watched, or possibly even read the summary of. Her fight with Broadhurst is representative, in that she is clearly the weaker fighter physically, getting bodied around the ring by Broadhurst.
I've only ever sparred with women, never gone full speed. But I agree with you: a man obviously punches much, much harder than a woman. ((I will say training has a big impact on how hard women hit pads, but that is of limited value)) Which is why it is obvious that Imane Khelif is not a man: Hermano Khelif would have been muscling her opponents around, battering their defenses with a brutal level of strength. If one watches boxing at the amateur level one can see the pattern of how a fight between a physically dominant but less skilled fighter goes with a more skilled boxer. It doesn't look like Khelif v Broadhurst.
Were the videos in your OP? I didn't see them there if so.
Anyways, I guess there's some middle ground between 'full blown dude' and 'elevated testosterone' with these intersex conditions. Since we aren't sure exactly what's up with Khelif this is bound to be speculative, but I think men tend to sit at something in the area of 20x the T levels of the average woman.
So if Khelif sits at 5-10x normal, this would still stack up poorly against full blown dudes, but would be well in the realm of full-blown doping in an XX athlete.
Doping, of course, is not allowed -- not sure where one should draw the line, but fighting sports make the issue a bit starker than with someone who just runs a bit faster or whatever.
They were linked! You can also just Google insane Khelif v Broadhurst!
Those are all important possibilities, but Khelif doesn't even fight like a stronger physical fighter. She mostly fights like a tall, lanky, weak fighter. Seriously, I don't understand what the argument that she's a man is, precisely because a man would just get in there and physically dominate! Why didn't she up until just the fight with Carini?
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