‘My husband left me for dead on floor of bedroom’
Christy Martin became a world champion boxer but her bloodiest fight was as a result of horrific domestic abuse, reports Kimia Zabihyan
Christy Martin lay on the floor of her bedroom, slowly regaining consciousness. As she came to, the first sound she heard was blood gurgling through her lungs. The second was her husband and trainer, Jim, taking a shower, washing the blood off his hands. It was Nov 23, 2010, and Jim had just tried to kill her, stabbing her four times and shooting her with Christy’s own gun, a pink 9mm Taurus.
It would be the second defining moment of her life. The first came 14 years earlier, as she walked into the ring in front of a sell-out crowd at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas to go six rounds with Deirdre Gogarty in a fight that catapulted women’s boxing into the mainstream. It was the hottest ticket in town: Mike Tyson v Frank Bruno. Boxing fans had groaned that a women’s fight was on the undercard, the sport was not accepted then – it was actually outlawed in Gogarty’s native Ireland.
Forget Tyson. Forget Bruno, who crossed himself 12 times as he walked into the ring looking like a rabbit in the headlights. The real action of the night was two women dropping bombs, one of them in pink trunks with a fringe. Christy won the thrilling contest, voted the fight of the night. A carousel of TV talk show invites followed, and a Sports Illustrated cover. Women’s boxing had arrived, and Christy had got what she wanted: respect as a fighter.
Now, at Canino’s gym in Dania Beach, Florida, Christy smiles at the memory.
“I remember getting in the ring and seeing all the celebrities and I was like, ‘Oh my God, anybody who is anybody is here.’ I knew it was a big opportunity and I had to take advantage of that. After the second or third round, Jessie Robinson [a promoter] said, ‘You’re rocking the f----- house Christy’. And I hear that in my head like it was this morning.”
I first wrote about Christy in 1995, “before all the big stuff happened”, as she puts it. She was from a tiny town in West Virginia, a coal miner’s daughter – as became her moniker. She was different to any other fighter out there. I remember being in her locker room, the only female journalist covering the fight, when she knocked out Erica Schmidlin on the Tyson v Buster Mathis Jnr undercard, and she was complaining about breaking a nail.
She had permed hair, a twinkle in her eye, and an aura of power, a sense of making waves for a new generation of women.
It was Don King’s
‘Jim controlled everything and I was his personal cash machine. I literally bled to make that money’
backing that sent Christy stratospheric, and it was his idea to get her on Tyson’s undercard. Now 90 years old, sitting in his woodpanelled office in South Florida, surrounded by memorabilia, boxing’s greatest-ever promoter smiles at the memory. “I loved Christy,” he says of the first time he met her. “She was jovial, and she was a fighter. She wasn’t one to roll over. They told me I couldn’t put Christy on the card and I said, ‘Well you won’t get Mike Tyson if you don’t have Christy’.”
King is an unusual advocate for gender equality, he never represented another female fighter, but he employed women to run his boxing empire.
“Christy earned every opportunity every time,” he says. “She worked hard and deserved every penny she earned. And she was fun on a promotion. She was SKD as we say in the ghetto: Something Kinda Different.”
The world fell in love with Christy’s spark that night in Vegas. Boxing royalty used to give her the “cold shoulder”, she says, but Vegas changed everything, not only in terms of respect, but finances, too. “My biggest total paydays were with Don,” she says. “He always paid what was on paper, plus more, 100 grand was my minimum. I loved my job. I might have done it for free probably…” she laughs. “I had Corvettes, Hummers, I had six cars.”
To the outside world, Christy
had everything, but behind the scenes “it was hell”. Christy was just 23 when she married Jim Martin, 25 years her senior. He was her trainer, husband, and abuser.
“Every time something positive happened, Jim would shoot me down and tell me it wasn’t about me but about him. He convinced me everybody hated me. He controlled everything and I was his personal cash machine… I was bringing the money through the front door and Jim was taking it out the back. I made that money. I literally bled to make that money.”
Now 53, Christy becomes emotional as she recalls the abuse she suffered for over 20 years, culminating in the attack that left her in hospital fighting for her life. “So many people think that domestic violence is about the bruises and punches, but it’s not,” says Christy, who gave evidence in court about Jim’s secret filming of her, blackmailing her to perform lewd sexual acts, and encouraging her to take cocaine. “If every time you do something your partner is bringing you down, finally you start to not believe in yourself and that’s what I think happened to me and it’s hard to rebuild that.”
Jim’s attack was prompted, he says, by the discovery that Christy had gone to meet an ex-girlfriend. He claims not to have known she had relationships with women in her past, a fact that Christy disputes. “It was almost the first thing I told him,” she says, “but Jim always would lay it on that ‘I’m going to tell everyone you are gay and your career will be over’. He always threatened me with that.”
Part of the marketing of Christy was the husband-and-wife story, with pink boxing gloves and freshly coiffured hair. “Jim was pushing that whole thing and telling me I should make comments about my opponents’ sexuality or their looks. I wasn’t comfortable with that. I fought some pretty tough-looking girls. I’m mean, and I want to knock you out but I don’t want to emotionally hurt you.”
“He had told me for 20 years that if I ever I left him he would kill me,” she says, starkly. By November 2010, she was so depressed she no longer cared. Things came to a head when Christy met up with the ex-girlfriend. Jim was incensed, and when Christy returned home she heard him sharpening a knife in the kitchen. He came into their bedroom and stabbed her four times, puncturing her lung, cutting her left leg to the bone before shooting her with her own gun. “He left me for dead on the bedroom floor,” she says, “I could hear my lung gurgling. I could have just given up. But I wasn’t ready to quit.” When Christy came round, she heard Jim in the shower and decided to escape.
Crawling out of the house and into the street, she managed to stop a passing car. “I came out the other side and thought, ‘OK, I’m going to be who I am. I’m going to be honest to me and to the world’.” And with that, Christy came out.
“The first I knew about what had happened was from the news”, says King, visibly angry as he recalls the attack. “I knew Jim was no good as far as I was concerned, but he is despicable. Christy has a lot of great qualities, a terrific character. She fights back. She’s not feeling sorry for herself. I admire that about her. But Jim lacks all that.”
In June 2012, Jim was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being found guilty of attempted seconddegree murder and manslaughter.
Christy, though, was determined to fight on. “When I woke up after being shot, first thing I thought was, ‘God left me here for a reason, to help other people’. And the second thing was, ‘I’m going to get back in the boxing ring’.” Just two months after surviving the attempt on her life, and desperate to secure her 50th win, Christy signed a one-fight deal with Bob Arum, against Dakota Stone. In June 2011, she fought two rounds with a broken hand before the ring doctor stopped the fight. “I was 50 seconds away from my 50th win and that’s what I really wanted. Arum says I was crying in the ring. I wasn’t crying I was pleading them not to stop the fight.”
In 2017, Christy married former world champion boxer Lisa Holewyne whom she had beaten in the ring 16 years previously.
After half a lifetime of fighting in and out of the ring, Christy is now determined to make a go of it as a boxing promoter, but it hurts that she has to carry the name of her abuser. “Jim Martin told me, ‘The world only knows you as Christy Martin’.” There is a sadness in her eyes as she says: “I wish I could get that Christy Martin attitude back.”
That is what abuse does. It puts out the light. But she is fighting back. Beyond the boxing, her story resonates with women who have been victims of domestic violence. Scrolling through her phone, Christy finds a message she received on Instagram that morning.
“Thank you for giving me the strength to leave a violent marriage,” it reads. “You are beyond an inspiration, you have saved my life.” “That’s why I do what I do,” Christy says.