Transgender Boxer Named Face of Everlast

October 4, 2019  

Patricio Manuel, the first transgender boxer to compete professionally in the sport, has also become the new face of iconic boxing brand Everlast. He is the first transgender person to do so as part of the company’s “Be First” campaign.

Everlast's global campaign challenges consumers to carve their own path to success. It is modeled after the well-known boxing term “Be First,” which is associated with dictating the pace of a fight by making your opponent follow your lead. The Be First campaign embodies this concept, challenging people to carve their own paths, and dictate the pace of their life, goals and personal journey. 

Before he transitioned, Manuel won five national amateur championships and competed in the 2012 Olympic trials as a woman, NBC News reported. But after a shoulder injury forced him to leave the sport, he made the decision to transition, even when people asked why he would give up boxing.

“That’s how bad I felt living that lie. If it meant that much to me, to risk the love of my life, boxing, then they knew that it was something that was valid,” Manuel said.

But he did return to the sport, and he won his first professional fight as a transgender man in 2018, NBC News reported.

“It’s going to hurt. Living your truth is going to hurt, but it’s worth it,” Manuel said.  

Manuel said in a Thursday video released by Everlast that when he was a child, he “felt completely disconnected from myself. I just mentally checked out so that I could continue coping through life. 

“It was boxing that brought me back into my body, and it was boxing that allowed me to be proud of actually what I was physically able to do, but boxing also taught me to really be introspective and be like ‘okay what do I really want, and how am I going to have to work for it, because, unfortunately, when you deviate from the norms that society has constructed, you have to fight for that identity and you have to really make it yourself,” Manuel said in the video.

Boxing giants like Jack Dempsey, Sugar Ray Robinson and Canelo Álvarez have also all been the face of Everlast. The company is the leading manufacturer of boxing, mixed martial arts and fitness equipment, NBC News reported.