Christy Martin, credited with legitimising female boxing, secretly lived a tortured life

Christy Martin poured a cup of sweet tea and a Sprite on her tab at Second Street station on a recent afternoon. She only had a $100 bill and didn’t want to bother the waitress by asking her to break it. The restaurant knew Martin’s was good for it. Everyone knows him in this former mining town. Martin, 54, is credited with legalizing women’s boxing in the modern era. The first female boxer to make the cover of Sports Illustrated, she remained undefeated for a decade, achieving success but secretly living a tortured life.

It was her second experience of fame—a terrifying, almost fatal one—that finally set her free. Martin first fought in the West Virginia “Tuffman” competition in 1987, the first year women were allowed to compete. She had never participated in a professional fight, never went to a boxing gym or wore gloves, but she was a star basketball player in high school and college and decided to give it a shot. Martin easily won the competition. She continued to train and compete, and in 1991 teamed up with a trainer named Jim Martin. A year later he proposed marriage. Soon, boxing promoter Don King called and put Martin on his card.

“I had no road map, I had no way,” she said. “I just kept fighting. I kept growing.” In 1996, she defeated Deirdre Gogarty in a well-received bout that was broadcast on Showtime, giving new credibility to women’s boxing. Her Sports Illustrated cover sold out worldwide. As she was walking down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, her new position began to sink in.

“It’s nothing but real stars out there, whether it’s athletes or actors – real stars – and I’m walking by a Versace store and these guys working there come across the street and ask for my autograph,” she said. “It was crazy for me.”

But she never got comfortable with fame. During an interview at Mullens’ restaurant, he shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably at the thought. “I still don’t see if I was famous or I am – I’m not,” she said. This is partly because her husband, Jim Martin, never gave her a chance to believe in his success. “They told me that the boxing world hates me, that my family hates me, that I have no fans,” she said. “Athletes have huge egos, but they are fragile. And it didn’t take me long to break that.”

Emotional, financial and sometimes physical abuse continued for 20 years. As her career progressed, so did her threats of violence and separation. The boxing ring gave comfort. “You can be aggressive, you can be strong, you can be all those things, you know, a winner,” Christy Martin said.

“That’s where I could be me. Outside is where I was beaten up, even though I faked it and tried to make people think I was so self-confident.” Jim Martin with his biggest secrets One threatened to share: She was gay. He told her about his sexuality when they first started working together, but she chose to ignore it for most of their relationship.

By 2010, his career was coming to an end and his marriage was over. She was reunited with an ex-girlfriend and decided to leave her husband. One day, she lay down to take a nap at their home in Tampa, Florida, when she heard Jim Martin sharpen his knife. He overheard her on the phone saying that he was a lesbian and she was leaving him for a woman. He then went into the bedroom and stabbed her several times, including in her chest and legs, shot her in the chest with her own pink-handed 9mm Glock. “He left me to die,” said Christy Martin.

When he got into the shower, she somehow got up and stumbled outside, having managed to flag a passing car. A stranger took her to the hospital. Quickly, she went from being a famous boxer to a well-known title. But when her fame changed, she changed for the better.

“Jim reassured me that if the world found out I was gay, I would lose everything, and in fact the opposite happened,” Christy Martin said. “I’m comfortable with my skin. I don’t need to hide. I am whoever I am.” In 2012, Jim Martin was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Christie Martin finished her career with 49 wins, seven losses and three draws, with 31 wins by knockout, and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020. In 2017, he married a former sparring partner, Lisa Hollewine. Martin has a boxing promotion company that he runs out of Austin, Texas. In most incidents, she reaches out to local domestic violence shelters. And every November 23, the date of the attack, she calls the stranger who saved her.

In 2016, a West Virginia teacher told Martin that one of his eighth graders had chosen him for his state’s history project. “In 200 years, out of all kinds of people, he chose me,” said Martin, still puzzled. “I was very touched.” Martin spoke to the student and later visited his class. “That’s part of the fame that means something,” she said.

Originally published at Pen 18