Kellie Maloney

Kellie Maloney: 'I should have been born a woman'

• Report rights infringement
• published: 15 Dec 2015
• views: 333

Kellie Maloney: 'I should have been born a woman'. (CNN)Christmas Day nearly three years ago, one of Britain's best-known sports personalities woke up in a London park; two dogs were licking his face, a smashed bottle of wine lay by his side, and prescription pills were strewn across the ground. "That's Frank Maloney!" exclaimed one of the small crowd who had gathered around the bewildered man, better recognized as the tough-talking manager behind former heavyweight champion of the world Lennox Lewis. Today, dressed in a fluffy maroon jumper with painted nails to match, Maloney is almost unrecognizable from the boxing promoter who tried to end his life that December 25. After undergoing gender reassignment in March last year, "Frank" is now "Kellie." And while the voice remains unchanged, the words coming out are very different. "For the first time in my life I feel complete and whole," says the 62-year-old in between sips of tea at her kitchen table in suburban Bromley, just south of London. "I don't see myself as transsexual, or transgender, or trans anything. I see myself as a woman and a human being," she says, adding that her last operation -- "the final piece of my jigsaw, you might say" -- is now behind her. Woman in a man's world Having retired in 2013, Maloney has now returned to the industry which shot her to fame in the 1990s and early noughties, and manages two up-and-coming boxers for the first time as a woman. "Whereas I was once at the top of the pile, I am now at the bottom and slowly have to work my way up in this world of boxing," she says, turning the ring which remains on her wedding finger, despite splitting with her wife of 15 years, Tracey. "And I'm doing that as the person I always believed I should be -- as Kellie Maloney.” In another life, Frank Maloney was one of the UK's most successful boxing promoters, managing Lewis when he became undisputed champion of the world in 1999, and guiding a number of other fighters to global, European and Commonwealth titles. The "Jack-the-Lad" promoter with a penchant for flamboyant suits and tendency to "pick fights" has now been replaced with a gentler, more caring manager. These days, Kellie chats to the wives and girlfriends of boxers about her clients' emotional state -- something "singly-minded" Frank would never do. Maloney says the macho world of boxing offered a way to suppress the woman she secretly believed she was, as she tried to keep up with imposing counterparts like Don King and Frank Warren. "I had to be this larger-than-life character, I had to keep up this tough-guy image," she says of a job that consumed her "24-7." "I never had much chance to think about it during the day -- it was only at night when I was alone in the hotel bedroom that the feelings would come back and I'd have the odd tear." Just 'one of the boys' The eldest of three boys growing up in a working-class Irish Catholic family in Peckham, south London, Maloney says she realized she was different from her brothers from the age of three. "In all my dreams as a child, I was always a girl -- never a boy," she says, smoothing down her neat blonde bob with one hand. "But I just tried to do what my brothers done. In them days you couldn't afford to be different," she says of an era in London where some pubs still had signs saying: "No dogs. No blacks. No Irish." Maloney's father encouraged his teenage son to take up boxing; they even had dreams of turning pro. But Frank's diminutive size -- standing a little over five feet tall -- meant the would-be boxer turned to the managerial side of the sport instead. It wasn't until 16-year-old Maloney stumbled upon a newspaper article about model April Ashley, one of Britain's first transsexuals, that she says she began to pinpoint why she felt so different -- "I thought, 'My God, this is how I feel, this is me.'" Just over a year later, Maloney moved out of the family home and starting growing her hair long and dressing like a woman on nights out. The only person who knew about her secret double-life was her homosexual housemate and friend, Alan Ferris. But a visit from Maloney's father 18 months later was enough to scare her from experimenting any further. Maloney cut off her hair, rejoined an amateur boxing club, and after a chance meeting with ex-girlfriend Jackie, married within six months and had their first child Emma shortly after. Maloney's father died in 2009 without ever knowing his son's secret, while mother Maureen has remained supportive throughout the transition. Does she ever wish she told her father the truth? "I couldn't," Maloney says, batting the question away with a wave of her hand. edition.cnn.com/2015/12/15/sport/kellie-maloney-frank-transgender-boxing/index.html