Former UFC welterweight title challenger Demian Maia says “it’s absurd for you to put a person who was born a man to fight a woman.”

Alana McLaughlin won her fight for Combate Global last weekend, which ignited a whole slew of controversy in the MMA space because she is a transgender fighter who was born a man. The MMA community dealt with this issue once in the past with Fallon Fox, but now that McLaughlin is competing as well, there are more fighters who say they don’t agree with it, including former UFC champion Michael Bisping, who had some choice words to say.

In addition to Bisping, Maia also doesn’t believe that McLaughlin or other transgendered fighters should be allowed to compete in MMA, as he told “Inteligência Ltda.”

“I think it’s absurd for you to put a person who was born a man to fight a woman. I’m going to talk about my sport, which is fighting. The person (who faces the trans athlete) will get hurt. There is no comparison. ‘Oh, but she started taking (female) hormones early on.’ Does not matter. The development there… And it’s not prejudice, none of that. But you have to understand that to work on the issue of prejudice in society, it’s not like that. This is not what will make people more or less prejudiced,” Maia said (h/t AG Fight).

“It is very clear that you cannot let this happen. It’s one thing for a man to want to fight a woman and for a woman to say: ‘Okay, I’m going to fight. The choice is mine’. Now, for you to force a woman to fight a transgender person who was born a man is absurd. I think that only those who are not in the sport accept this, because they have no idea what it is.”

Do you agree with the comments Demian Maia made about transgender fighters?