A self-described soccer hooligan who routinely beat up rival fans is undergoing gender reassignment surgery, the Express&Echo reported.
Becci Allen, 36, of Exeter, England, made her decision to transition four years ago and says she "cannot wait to have [her] operation" sometime after April, the outlet wrote. "My only regret is that I should have done this years ago."
At 6-foot-2 and formerly weighing 336 pounds, Allen used to spend weekends brawling at club and England national team matches, using violence to suppress her desires to become a woman, she said. "I was always fighting something I wanted to be," Allen told the paper. "I am not proud of what I used to do."
Allen told the Sun that before she began transitioning she enjoyed England national team matches against Sweden as excuses to beat up Swedes. And when it came to club matches, Allen told the Mirror: “If there was an Exeter City-Plymouth Argyle game we would just go down there and basically beat the crap out of whoever was supporting Argyle."
She has since parted ways with the male-dominated hooligan culture, which has little tolerance for gay fans, let alone those transitioning to another gender. Supporters of the Russian team FC Zenit St Petersburg recently declared that gay and black players were not welcome. And in the weeks leading up to last summer's Euro 2012 tournament, England's gay fans traveling to the Ukraine match sites were warned to keep a low profile after a mob of "football hooligans" stopped Kiev's first-ever gay pride parade, the Independent reported.
Allen, who has lost 98 pounds and will undergo hormone treatment and voice therapy, hasn't attended any matches at her old stomping grounds since beginning the transition -- but she may return one day. "Having a sex change does not mean I have to stop going to football or darts," she told Express&Echo. "I am finally getting the life I was meant to live."
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