Knock Out Blonde: The Kellie Maloney Story
As the Peckham born boxing manager who led Lennox Lewis to championship glory, Kellie Maloney was no stranger to the spotlight.
But, her greatest fight was yet to come when, in 2014, she announced to the world that she was undertaking gender reassignment surgery.
A new documentary, Knockout Blonde: The Kellie Maloney Story, is coming to the screen with a special Q&A on September 9, at Genesis cinema in Mile End, before hitting digital platforms on October 7.
The Verdi Productions and Art Factory Films picture charts the journey of Ms Maloney and her attempts to conceal her inner gender conflict as she became one of the sport’s most successful boxing promoters.
The film includes never-before-seen interviews with Ms Maloney, appearances by family, friends, and colleagues, and archive footage that showcases the highs and lows of her personal and professional life.
Ms Maloney, formerly known as Frank Maloney, was born in Peckham to Irish Catholic parents as one of three brothers.
Encouraged by her father to pursue boxing, she took part in her first match aged 11.
But, her small stature put her at a disadvantage and she began work as a boxing manager instead.
By the late 1970s, her experience training other boxers and organising amateur competitions led her to a career as a professional trainer, working with promoter Frank Warren.
After splitting with Warren in the 1980s, Maloney moved into management and began promoting professional fights, becoming Lennox Lewis’s manager at the height of the macho 1990s boxing world.
On September 14, 2009, Maloney suffered a heart attack after finding the body of one of her clients, Darren Sutherland. The Irishman who won bronze at the Beijing Olympics, was found hanged at his flat in Bromley. He was only 27.
After surviving the attack and visiting a therapist regarding her need for anger management, Ms Maloney accepted that a key source of the strain in her life came from denying her belief that she should have been born a woman.
When Maloney came out as Kellie in the mid-2010s, she showed a worrying addiction to the publicity circuit, filling tabloid front covers and appearing in the 2014 season of Celebrity Big Brother.
Knockout Blonde: The Kellie Maloney Story, offers a very different, honest view in Ms Maloney’s life and the emotional damage in the vicinity.
Footage captures her years of denial, showing her to be visibly strained and ground down by the kind of denial which saw her sneaking off to a transgender salon in Staten Island as Mr Lewis prepared for his first fight with Evander Holyfield at Madison Square Garden.
Ultimately, the documentary shows how self-acceptance has changed her life for the better.
Knock Out Blonde: The Kellie Maloney Story is directed and written by Tom DeNucci, Seth Koch & Rick Lazes. The trio have previously collaborated on a number of boxing documentaries including Lennox Lewis: The Untold Story and My Father Muhammed Ali.
Pictured top: Kellie Maloney in Knock Out Blonde: The Kellie Maloney Story (Picture: Courtesy of Kaleidoscope Entertainment)