Who Is Christy Martin? Meet The Boxing Champion Sydney Sweeney Portrays In ‘Christy’
Christy Martin’s story spans triumph, survival, and reinvention, making her one of the most influential figures in women’s sports.
Featured image: 1995 portrait of Christy Martin by Holly Stein/Allsport//Getty Images
Christy Martin’s story is returning to the spotlight this fall, this time on the big screen. Christy, the new film from director David Michôd, stars Sydney Sweeney as the West Virginia fighter whose life inside and outside the ring reshaped the sport of women’s boxing. For anyone unfamiliar with Martin, the movie will be a crash course in triumph, survival, and resilience. For those who remember her rise in the 1990s, it is a reminder of how much she endured to get there.
Martin grew up in a coal mining town that stretched barely a mile end to end. She was a gifted athlete, excelling in basketball at Concord College, but boxing came to her by chance. In 1987, when women were first allowed to enter a local “toughman” contest, she signed up without ever having trained. She won easily. Soon she was fighting professionally, building a career that would make her the most recognized female boxer of her generation.
By the mid-1990s Martin was a sensation. She signed with Don King, fought at Madison Square Garden, and became the first female boxer on the cover of Sports Illustrated after her bloody 1996 showdown with Deirdre Gogarty was broadcast nationwide.
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But her public success masked a private life marked by abuse. Her trainer and husband, Jim Martin, manipulated and controlled her for two decades. He beat her, kept her dependent on cocaine, and repeatedly threatened to expose her sexuality if she left him. The ring became her only refuge. “You can be aggressive, you can be strong, you can be all those things, you know, a winner,” she told the New York Times in 2022. “That’s where I could be me. On the outside is where I was beaten down, even though I faked it and tried to make people think that I was so confident.”
Everything changed on November 23, 2010. Christy, then 42, was preparing to leave her husband for a former girlfriend when he attacked her in their Florida home. He stabbed her, slashed her leg to the bone, and shot her in the chest with her own pink-handled Glock. She survived by sheer will, stumbling outside to flag down a passing car. Jim Martin was later convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison, where he died in 2023.
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In the years since, she has become an advocate for survivors of abuse, speaking at schools, prisons, and domestic violence shelters. She calls the man who saved her every year on the anniversary of the attack. And in 2017, she married Lisa Holewyne, a former opponent and world champion who had once sparred against her in the ring. Together, they run a boxing promotion company out of Texas.
Her career stats are staggering — 49 wins, 31 by knockout, seven losses, three draws — but her legacy is measured in more than numbers. She was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020 as part of the first group of women ever honored.
With Christy bringing her story to theaters nationwide on November 7, a wider audience will see not just a fighter, but a woman who has endured, rebuilt, and continued forward on her own terms.
Check out the trailer below:
