KNOCKED DOWN, NEVER OUT
Christy Martin carries scars of life all the way to Boxing Hall of Fame
Christy Martin was literally the face of women’s boxing. She was and still is the only woman boxer to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1996. She became a world champion in 2009 and fought high-profile bouts against future Hall of Famers Laila Ali and Holly Holm.
Her first marriage was to her trainer/ manager Jim Martin, almost twenty years her senior.
Her second marriage was to Lisa Holewyne, the woman she defeated in her 48th pro fight.
And that ain’t the half of it.
Her marriage to Martin led to her getting hooked on cocaine, suffering a stroke on the operating table for surgery on a broken hand, and oh yeah, getting stabbed and shot — with her own gun — by here trainer/ manager/husband.
Christy Martin, known as “The Coal Miner’s Daughter,” is if nothing else, a survivor.
If you think her life would make a great documentary/movie, you’re right. The Netflix biopic “Untold: Deal with the Devil,” aired in 2017. Her book, “Fighting For Survival,” with Ron Borges, will be released June 22.
This past weekend, she was officially inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y. She was inducted in 2020, but due to COVID, she went in with the classes of 2021 and 2022.
The 17 fighters who went into the Hall with Martin make up a who’s who of champions, including Roy Jones, Jr., Floyd Mayweather, Jr., Bernard Hopkins, Shane Mosley and female champs Ali, Holm, Bronxite Miriam Trimiar, and Lucia Rijker, to name a few.
“I’m happy. I’m just not professionally happy,” she says from her home in Austin, Texas, where she is the CEO of Christy Martin Promotions. She’s not sure if boxing is what she wants to be involved in long term. For now, she is a learning promoter. “I really want to find my niche where I can fit in, If you don’t have TV or a major sponsor behind you, you can’t get the better, elite fighters and it’s always going to be a struggle.
“I had the world’s greatest promoter that promoted me for my career. I learned a lot,” she proudly remarks about Don King. He put her on many of his pay-per-view cards, especially when Mike Tyson was headlining.
“Christy Martin put women’s boxing on the map,” says Tyson in the Netflix documentary.
Promoting fights these days has changed from Martin’s time as a fighter.
“It seems like everything has gone to social media and it’s about who has the most followers,” she says. “I liked it the way DK did it. You go out there and the people could touch you, feel your energy. The people can get excited about the fight.
“Today, so much of it is fake,” she says with a chuckle. “I had some dustups in my career, but there were never any of them that were fake.”