What Happened to Christy Martin? There Was a Day She Thought, “This Is How It Ends”

Content warning: This article mentions graphic details of domestic violence and physical abuse.

If you’ve ever heard the name Christy Martin, you probably picture a fighter with gloves raised and fire in her eyes. She wasn’t just winning matches — she was breaking barriers, proving that women belonged in a sport that had long shut them out. Her toughest battle, however, didn’t happen under the lights of a boxing ring. It happened behind closed doors, where no crowd was cheering and no referee was ready to step in.

So, what happened to Christy Martin? The answer is both heartbreaking and inspiring. It’s the story of abuse, survival, and the kind of grit you don’t just train for in a gym.

Christy’s hometown in West Virginia was small — so small she once said it was about the length of a single street. Growing up there, she learned to fight early, and eventually her fists carried her all the way to championship belts and pay-per-view cards. Her memoir Fighting for Survival makes clear that while fans saw a fearless boxer, she was hiding years of pain.

In an interview with The Guardian, Christy revealed that she had been sexually abused as a child but never spoke of it until decades later, during her husband’s trial. “I didn’t even tell my mom and dad until the trial with Jim, when I was 42,” she said. That silence, along with the pressure of hiding her sexuality, gave James “Jim” Martin — her trainer and husband — tremendous control over her life.

According to ESPN, Jim was more than just controlling. He repeated the same threat for 20 years: if Christy ever left him, he’d kill her. At first, she brushed it off, but eventually the fear took root. “Somewhere in the middle of those two decades, I realized no, this is how it’s gonna end for me,” she admitted.

On Nov. 23, 2010, Christy decided she was leaving Jim. When she returned home, the confrontation turned into a nightmare. Over the course of more than an hour, Jim stabbed her multiple times, punctured her lung, slashed her calf so badly that muscle was hanging loose, and finally shot her in the chest with her own pink 9 mm handgun.

Christy described lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling vent, and thinking, “This is it.” But then, against all odds, she found the strength to stand. “God got me up,” she told The Guardian.

She staggered out of the house, bleeding heavily, keys in her hand. They turned out to be for the wrong car, but it didn’t matter — she made it into the road, where a passerby named Rick Cole stopped to help. To this day, she still sends him a message every year on the anniversary of that night.

Jim was later convicted of attempted second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He died behind bars in 2024. For Christy, survival was only the beginning. The physical recovery, though painful, came surprisingly fast — she was back in the gym within weeks. “The physical stuff was the easy part,” she explained. “But the mental part, I still deal with.”

Her way forward was to speak out. Christy began telling her story at schools, prisons, and domestic violence shelters, hoping to reach people who might feel as trapped as she once did. “I’m not completely healed,” she admitted, “but if I can help somebody else, it helps me. I’m doing what God left me here for.”

In 2017, Christy married former rival Lisa Holewyne, finding love and stability after years of abuse. She also stayed in the sport, running Christy Martin Promotions to support other fighters who dream of making it big.

Christy’s story hasn’t stayed locked away in court records or memoir pages. Netflix released Untold: Deal With the Devil in 2021, a gripping documentary about her rise and near-fatal fall. And, in November 2025, her life will be dramatized in a biopic called Christy, starring Sydney Sweeney.