From Yusaf's apartment in Los Angeles-where he moved last fall after the scandal surrounding his sexuality hurtled him onto the media's hit list-he dances between personal blows, trying to make his family proud of him again. Now, however, he says that old friends and members of his own family throw them. Yusaf retired from boxing two years ago, but he's still dodging punches.
Watch More: Dressing the Part: Meet the Consultant Teaching Trans Women How to Be 'Feminine' I just didn't want to mess my reputation up, and I would have took it to my grave because it would have never came out.' 'Everybody looked at me as this hero,' he said. When he and I met this winter, the former athlete seemed hopeful yet emotionally wounded. Ashamed by that fact, and knowing that it might jeopardize his reputation in the eyes of his peers, he barricaded his sexuality behind an ultra-masculine persona: In the ring, Yusaf brutalized other men for a living, and in the bedroom, the self-proclaimed 'whoremonger' fathered ten children.
Yusaf is attracted to transgender women, and he has been since nineteen years old.
