It is that time of year where the Rainbow community (LGBTIQ+, Takatāpui) celebrate the Pride Festival in New Zealand, especially in Auckland and Wellington.

To celebrate the Pride Festival, highlighted below are the prominent Rainbow figures in New Zealand boxing.

Geovana Peres is one of, if not the most important person in boxing for the LGBT community. Not only is she a big role model for the LGBT community, but also for women in New Zealand.

In July 2018, she became a New Zealand citizen, making her first-ever LGBT New Zealand citizen to become a professional boxer.

She made history before becoming a New Zealand citizen, when she won the NZNBF title in 2017, becoming the first-ever LGBT person to win a New Zealand title.

In 2019, she won the WBO World Light Heavyweight title against Lani Daniels, making history again by being the first-ever LGBT person representing New Zealand to win a major boxing world title.

She is a trailblazer, boundary breaker and now a World Champion.

She will have held the world title for a full year in March this year.

Her manager Terry Batchelor is in talks with international promoters to get her to defend her world title on the big stage.

Dianne Beazley made her professional debut in May 2019.

Even though it was in losing effort, she made history to become first New Zealand-born LGBT person to compete as a professional boxer.

Additionally, she became the first Takatāpui to fight in professional boxing. In 2009, she won the New Zealand national amateur championship in the light heavyweight division.

Dianne retired from boxing after serious hand and shoulder injuries. After almost a decade, she decided to make her return, this time as a professional.

Today, she trains amateur boxers and is an inspiration for her team and her community. She is still focused to return to boxing sometime in 2020.

(Excuse me for talking in the third person here.) Benjamin Thomas Watt is one of the first, if not the first person from the LGBT community to become a professional boxing judge.

Benjamin is very active in the boxing community, including promoting multiple events, writing articles like this, commentating and hosting on Gladrap Youtube channel, creating Wikipedia articles, matchmaking events, being the Boxrec editor for New Zealand, and of course judging boxing events.

So far in his career, he has judged more than 500 corporate boxing fights, 89 professional boxing fights, 17 title fights (including NZ, regional and tournament finals) and 1 WBO regional title fight.

Outside of boxing, he has put in significant work with the Rainbow community, including volunteering at Rainbow Youth in 2011, multiple years at New Zealand Aids Foundation, multiple years at Mika Haka Foundation and volunteered for pridenz.com.

In 2012, he travelled New Zealand to talk and listen to the youth in LGBT youth groups and school and discovered that homophobia is still an issue here.

Ardon England is one of the first, if not the first corporate LGBT boxer in New Zealand. He competed back in 2017 against Daniel Takawe.

Ardon dedicated the fight to the LGBT community and in particular to the people who were bullied for being gay and told they weren’t good enough.

In 2019, he opened up his own LGBT boxing class at Boxing Central, the first in New Zealand.

Below are listed some international names prominent in the LGBT community:

Ann Wolfe (Lesbian) WBA World Super Middleweight Champion

Christy Martin (Lesbian) WBC Super Welterweight Champion

Emile Griffith (Bisexual) World Middleweight champion

Fallon Fox (Male to Female Transgender) MMA Fighter

Gina Guidi (Lesbian) WIBA & IWBF World champion

Jeri Sitzes (Lesbian) Muay Thai World Champion

Kellie Maloney (Male to Female Transgender) British Boxing manager and promoter

Lisa-Marie Vizaniari (Lesbian) Shot Put Commonwealth Games Gold Medalist, WBF & WIBA World Champion.

Lucia Rijker (Lesbian) Kickboxer and Boxer

Mark Leduc (Gay) Olympic Silver Medalist

Marlen Esparza (Lesbian) World title Contender, Olympic Bronze Medalist

Nicola Adams (Bisexual) 2 x Olympic Gold medalist, WBO female flyweight champion

Orlando Cruz (Gay) 2 x World title Challenger

Panama Al Brown (Gay) World Bantamweight Champion and first-ever reported LGBT Professional boxer

Parinya Charoenphol (Male to Female Transgender) Muay Thai Kickboxer

Patricio Manuel (Female to male Transgender) first-ever transgender professional and amateur boxer

Wilhelm von Homburg (Bisexual) German boxer

Yusaf Mack (Bisexual) World Champion Challenger