Kellie Maloney has returned to boxing promotion by taking on a boxer from the Highlands.
Maloney went public last August with the news that she was transitioning genders and today she made her return to boxing as she unveiled her two latest boxers – Gary Cornish from Inverness and Tony Jones from Shropshire.
The unbeaten heavyweight from the Highlands will face Hungarian Zoltan Csala for the vacant IBO Intercontinental title at Bellahouston Sports Centre in Glasgow on Saturday, May 23 and will now do so under the guidance of Maloney.
Maloney is resuming a career that saw Lennox Lewis guided to world heavyweight titles in the 1990s.
Under her previous name Frank, she called time on a 30-year career in October 2013, handing back licences to the British Boxing Board of Control after growing disillusioned with the sport.
Along with Lewis, Maloney also took the likes of Paul Ingle and Scott Harrison to world titles.
Maloney said: “If I put it in football terms, I’ve been the manager of Manchester United and now I’m going to start managing Nuneaton Borough because I’ve got to start at the bottom again and there’s no getting away from that.
“The opportunity and personal challenge for me is very big.”
When asked how she would feel if some people suggested her decision to transition genders was a “marketing ploy”, she replied: “If the people who think that want to go through what I’ve been through they are welcome to try it and let them walk in my shoes and see how hard it is.
“If it was a marketing ploy I should be locked up in a lunatic asylum.”