Fallon Fox broke the skull of an opponent
This has been a favorite line of anti-trans-athlete detractors, like Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, and it is incredibly misleading.
When people use the term “skull,” they’re almost universally talking about the thick, hard cranial portion of the skull that protects the brain. In reality, the skull is made up of various bones that are essentially fused together. The orbit — consisting of the bones around the eye — is part of the facial skeleton and is what was broken in the fight.
To read articles and social-media posts from people opposed to the inclusion of trans women in women’s sports, you’d think this was a once-in-a-lifetime injury.
While of course broken bones don’t happen in every MMA fight, this kind of injury is not unique to fights involving trans athletes.
“I’d say we see broken orbitals as the result of MMA bouts about once every two to three months at the highest levels,” Zane Simon, editor at Bloody Elbow, said. “Maybe at times slightly more often than that. Obviously, with the large amount of MMA that takes place around the globe and on smaller, regional shows, those kinds of facial fractures are going to be a fairly common thing month-to-month. But we certainly don’t see them as often as we see broken noses or hand injuries.”
The nose is also part of the fused skull. But of course we don’t see “unfair MMA fighter breaks opponent’s skull” when there’s a broken nose.