Stabbed,shot,left to die: Christy Martin and gender-based violence in boxing

Abstract

This article presents a biographical narrative of Christy Martin, a former world champion boxer who survived being stabbed and shot by her trainer/husband. Rooted in a sociological imagination, this biographic research chronicles Martin’s boxing career and its entanglements with gender-based violence. The boxing industry has a widely acknowledged, yet under-reported, problem with men’s violence against women. This article aims to illustrate that women’s boxing should be critically examined for the ways in which it functions both as a site of and a sanctuary from gender-based violence. Within this paper, I draw from media coverage of Christy Martin’s boxing career, over 700 pages of transcripts from the subsequent criminal trial, an interview with Martin, as well as my own research in women’s boxing, including work with survivors of domestic violence.

Keywords

abuse biographical sociology biography boxing domestic violence gender-based violence narrative sport trauma theory

Christy Martin was the face of women’s boxing when it captured the public’s attention in the mid-1990s. The first and only female boxer to make the cover of Sports Illustrated, Martin (49-7-3 with 31 knockouts) is often credited with legitimizing women’s professional boxing in America. She resurfaced in the public eye in 2010 when her trainer and husband, Jim Martin, shot and stabbed her and then left her to die. Remarkably, Christy survived the attempted murder and eventually returned to the sport. In this article, I employ a biographical approach to chronicle Martin’s boxing career and its entanglements with domestic violence. Biographic research is used here as a way to document Martin’s experience, past events, and to engage a sociological imagination that speaks to the interplay between public issues and personal experiences (Shantz, 2009). Christy Martin’s life and near death clearly highlight that being a world champion boxer is not enough to insulate against domestic violence. In this article, I highlight the ways in which the sport often functions both as a site of and a sanctuary from gender-based violence.

Gender-based violence is physical, sexual, or psychological harm that is directed at someone because of their gender, gender expression, or gender identity. While men and women both experience gender-based violence, the vast majority of victims are girls and women (Status of Women Canada, 2020). The boxing industry, like many other professional sports, has a widely acknowledged problem with men’s violence against women. To be clear, this is not to say that male boxers commit more violent assaults on women than other men – this is not the case. Gender-based violence is widespread. As journalist Bryan Graham (2020) observes, “Impunity for violence against women is as universal an issue as issues get”. Indeed, some of the sport’s biggest names are known for their violent relationships with women. Mike Tyson’s three-year prison sentence for rape, and Floyd Mayweather’s long history of domestic violence are notable, but not exceptional, examples. More recently, videos posted to social media have highlighted the issue of domestic abuse by male boxers. In February 2020, a video of World Boxing Association’s lightweight champion Gervonta Davis choking a woman, the mother of his child, at a basketball game at the University of Miami was viewed more than 7.6 million times (Graham, 2020). A few months later, world boxing champion Billy Joe Saunders posted a video jokingly teaching men how to throw a hard overhand right to “finish” off girlfriends who are “giving you a bit of mouth” during the coronavirus lockdown (Rafael, 2020).

What remains vastly under-reported is the gender-based violence experienced by women within the sport of boxing. Here I am not only speaking of abuse that is perpetrated by boxers’ intimate partners, but by trainers, promoters, managers, gym owners, and others in positions of power over the fighter. Increasingly, researchers studying gender-based violence have urged sport organizations worldwide to acknowledge how widespread the problem is and to take action (Fasting, 2015; Hayhurst et al., 2018; Mergaert et al., 2016; Rulofs, 2015). Yet, as boxing promoter Lou DiBella observes, “boxing really is still like Dodge City, where we tolerate almost anything. . . In boxing, there’s really no one overseeing the sport” (Idec, 2019). This lack of oversight has and will continue to be a complicated problem for the sport. Critical sport scholars must directly address gender-based violence and abuse within boxing.

Methods

Biographical research has a long tradition in the social sciences and enables analysis that draws from personal accounts to study broader social issues (Caetano and Nico, 2019; Denzin, 1989; Mills, 1961; Shantz, 2009). Within sociology, biographical research is “undertaken on individual lives employing autobiographical documents, interviews or other sources and presenting accounts in various forms” (Temple, 2006: 8). As Temple (2006) outlines, “there is no consensus on the boundaries between terms such as narrative, biography, life history, or life story and researchers use the terms in overlapping and different ways” (p.8). Notably, C Wright Mills coined the phrase “sociological imagination,” “to speak to the need to understand the interplay between public issues (social structures) and personal troubles (biography)” (Shantz, 2009: 115). Narrative research, including biographic narratives, are particularly relevant to sport and physical cultural studies as they enable stories, voices, and issues that are often situated on the margins to be moved to the center (Butler-Kisber 2018; Smith and Sparkes, 2009). Feminist sport studies scholars have long embraced using theory to engage with biographies and personal experiences, “as impetus, example, and frame” to map gendered inequalities and experiences, and “identify sites and opportunities for strategic interventions” (Morley and Walsh in Markula, 2005: 9).

As highlighted by Smith and Sparkes (2008), bodily experiences are a central part of narratives and to make sense of our experiences, “we not only tell stories about our bodies, but we also tell stories out of and through our bodies” (p.219, emphasis in original). Trauma researchers, such as Judith Herman (2015), Bessel van der Kolk (2014), and Resmaa Menakem (2017), have also argued that trauma reshapes the way we inhabit and experience our bodies. In this article, guided by a trauma- and violence-informed approach, I assembled Christy Martin’s biography by selecting key biographical events and their sequence to build an account of her experiences of gender-based violence within the sport of boxing. Biographical materials were sourced using the following strategies. First, I collected media sources (print, broadcast, and online) that covered Martin’s career, which spanned over two decades. Second, I utilized transcripts from the 2012 criminal trial, including the pre-trial depositions. Third, I conducted an interview with Christy Martin with the aim of having her narrate the pivotal moments in her life. The interview was audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Given that the interview focused on her experiences with intimate partner violence, I approached our conversation with much care. I have conducted hundreds of interviews with survivors of violence throughout my career, and this was the only time I have explicitly asked an interviewee to discuss their experience with abuse. The distinction here is that Martin has, on several occasions, spoken publicly about her trauma. Those working in trauma-focused studies have outlined the ethical complexities of conducting research with traumatized participants and it is imperative that researchers are aware of the ways in which a narrative methodology might evoke the traumatic experience (Abkhezr et al., 2020; Haene et al., 2010).

Biographies, like any narrative approach, must be organized and interpreted (Denzin, 2011). The analysis was based on a variant of Josselson’s (2004) analytic method designed for personal narratives of experience and a feminist trauma studies framework. The former examines the various messages in the account provided by the person storying their life, while the researcher’s task “is hermeneutic and reconstructive,” striving for explanation beyond the text to offer a telling at some different level of discourse (Josselson, 2004: 3). A feminist trauma studies approach refuses to depoliticize gender-based violence from interlocking oppressions of systemic violence (Caruth, 1996; Herman, 2015). In accordance with this approach, the results are presented in narrative form with thick data descriptions.

Having considered the methods that informed this article, the remainder of this paper is divided into four sections. I begin by mapping out Martin’s career trajectory, tracing her ground-breaking rise in the sport. Next, the article details the domestic abuse, attempted murder, and the resulting criminal trial. Following this, I focus on her return “home” to the sport where she concludes her pugilistic career. Finally, the closing discussion centers this work in existing scholarship on gender and boxing, with a focus on the ways in which boxing can operate both as a site of abuse and a space to heal from trauma and violence.

The rise of Christy Martin

Christy Salters was born and raised in Mullens, West Virginia, a small coal-mining town. An all-state high school basketball player, she earned a scholarship to play college ball at Concord College where she majored in education (Nieves, 1996). In 1986, while still in college, she began to enter local Toughman/Toughwoman contests. Art Dore, a former boxer and a promoter, created the Toughman contest in 1979, which gave people with no substantive boxing experience the opportunity to test themselves in the ring. Toughman and Toughwoman competitions were unregulated exhibitions, beyond the purview of state boxing commissions. Participants in these contests were often mismatched, frequently lacking any formal boxing training. The rules permitted competitors to box three, one-minute rounds, wearing gloves and headgear. As one journalist covering the events explained, “To enter a Toughman competition a prospective contestant requires two things: (a) the entry fee, usually $50, and (b) a pulse” (Kimball, 2003). Toughman contests were wildly popular and were held in over a hundred American cities (Jennings, 2016). By 2001, Toughman contests were televised on the FX Network (Thompson, 2016). With female pugilists barred from amateur boxing in the US until 1993, Toughwoman provided the rare opportunity to legally fight in a ring. Martin recalled that the contests were “a big deal . . . it sold out the arena, which held about 4000, 5000 people” (Ninth Judicial Circuit, Orange County, Florida (2010) 48-2010-CF-16777). Christy won her first bout along with a US$1000 cash prize (Nieves, 1996). She fought seven times and left the Toughwoman circuit with a record of six wins and one loss.

Toughman contests still exist despite legislative efforts to ban them after several deaths of male and female competitors (Jennings, 2016). While few male boxers (although there are exceptions, including Tommy Morrison, Greg Haugen, and Eric “Butterbean” Esch) parlayed Toughman success into professional boxing careers, a cohort of female professional boxers did. During the 1990s, Toughwomen Christy Salters, Andrea DeShong, Shannon Hall, Mary Jo Saunders, and others entered into professional boxing careers (Smith, 2014). While Toughwoman contests did little to add technical skill to a fighter’s repertoire, the cash prizes and the opportunity for bouts made them attractive. While most male professional fighters boasted years of formal amateur training and hundreds of amateur bouts, women often entered the pro ranks from the fringes of the sport with much less formal training.

Christy Martin’s professional boxing career spanned 23 years, from 1989 to 2012. She fought with the ring name “The Coal Miner’s Daughter,” a nod to her West Virginia roots and to her father’s work in the mines. A welterweight at 5′4 1/2″, she finished her career with a record of 49 wins, seven losses, three draws, and 31 knockouts. In 2017, the Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA) created the BWAA Christy Martin Women’s Fighter of the Year Award to be presented annually. As a boxer, Christy Martin held an important spotlight. Indeed, two of the most powerful, most staying images of women’s boxing are of Martin. The first is Martin on the undercard of the Mike Tyson–Frank Bruno fight in Las Vegas in 1996. She is wearing pink, her signature color. Her gloved hands are raised above her head, hair falling messily around her smiling face as her nose continues to bleed, staining her pink top and boxing shorts with blood splatters. The fight, and her victory over Irish fighter “Dangerous” Deirdre Gogarty on March 16, 1996, was the first women’s fight televised via pay-per-view. The fight was watched by “upwards of 1.1 million viewers,” making it the second-most-watched card in pay-per-view history at that time (Hoffer, 1996). The image of a bloodied and exuberant Martin provided a pugilistic spectacle that deeply contrasted prevailing images of women’s boxing. Women boxers were previously portrayed in titillating scenes, such as “foxy boxing,” a form of sex work rooted in the erotic, often comic denigration of women.

The second enduring image of Martin appeared a month later in April 1996. Martin became the first female boxer to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The issue featured Martin posed in her trademark pink, gloved hands on her hips, and head held high. The caption reads: “The Lady Is A Champ. Boxing’s Sensation, Christy Martin.” The feature article, titled “Gritty Woman” (Hoffer, 1996), leads with: “Christy Martin is knocking down stereotypes even as she refuses to champion the cause of women in the ring”. Right from the start of Martin’s career, she made it clear she was not fighting for gender equity, stating “I’m not out to make a statement about women in boxing, or even women in sports. . . I am not trying to put women in the forefront. . . This is about Christy Martin” (Hoffer, 1996).

The unwilling great female hope

Christy Martin’s professional career is linked to her ex-husband Jim Martin, a former light heavyweight fighter, 25 years her senior. Christy met Jim when she was a 22-year-old substitute teacher with a handful of wins from Toughwoman contests and a few boxing matches. The story of their meeting is well known in boxing circles – a story Jim often boasted about in early media coverage. In 1990, Christy Salters walked into Jim Martin’s gym in Bristol, Tennessee, hoping he would become her new trainer. Jim did not want anything to do with women’s boxing, let alone have a female boxer in his gym. He sent in one of his boxers to spar her – with the following instructions: “So I had it all set up,” he remembers, “to have her ribs broke. A couple of ribs, anyway. . .. I’m sort of a macho guy, and I didn’t think women belonged in the fight game. So there was no question I was going to have her ribs broke” (Hoffer, 1996). Christy’s work ethic, talent, and determination eventually persuaded Jim that she had a place in the fight game. When Christy was 23 years old and Jim was 48, they married. Their relationship was often discussed in the media. Richard Hoffer, who wrote the Sports Illustrated feature story, described the “husband-wife thing,” noting that although Jim Martin was inevitably “enlightened” this centered largely on Christy’s marketability. Indeed, Christy did become a moneymaker. Years later she referred to her bloody nose in the Gogorty fight as “the most profitable bloody nose in boxing history” (Walder, 2011).

Within a year of their marriage, Christy became the first woman to be signed by promoter Don King, the “electric-haired bombastic showman” and driving force behind heavyweight kings Muhammad Ali, George Forman, and Mike Tyson (Mannix, 2015). Martin became one of King’s biggest draws and earned purses that climbed from US$5000 to US$350,000. She was gifted BMW luxury cars from both Mike Tyson and Don King, the latter promising to make her the first female boxer millionaire (Nieves, 1996). At the height of her popularity, Martin appeared on several television shows, including the Today Show, 60 Minutes, David Lettermen, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, as well as an episode of the sitcom Roseanne. At the peak of her career, 10 of her fights aired on Showtime, giving her more televised coverage on a premium network than any other female boxer before her.

At the same time that Christy Martin became the highest paid and most famous female boxer in the world, she was equally adamant that she was not interested in speaking up for the new wave of female fighters. It became almost a point of pride for the Martins to be known as “decidedly old-fashioned in their sexual politics” (Hoffer, 1996). In other words, their sexism and homophobia were wildly transparent. Jim explained that he liked that Christy had physical competence and toughness without being a “manly type of woman” (Hoffer, 1996). Likewise, Christy worked to assert her own respectability in relation to other female boxers. Known for her acid remarks about female competitors, she also refused to fight in female-driven boxing federations such as the Women’s International Boxing Federation (Nieves, 1996), even though boxing associations like the World Boxing Association and the World Boxing Organization did not crown female boxers until 2004 and 2009, respectively. At the outset of her professional career, the ranks of women’s amateur boxing were just beginning to grow. Most boxing gyms in the 1990s were just starting to train female boxers and competitions like the New York Golden Gloves only opened their doors to female participants in 1995 (Smith, 2014). While Christy Martin’s assessment of the shallow talent pool in the early years of women’s boxing was accurate, Martin was criticized over her career for not supporting female fighters and women’s boxing in general.

Martin’s professional career saw her matched against unknown opponents as well as established fighters like Holly Holm (33-2-3, with nine knockouts (KOs)) and Laila Ali (24-0-0, 21 KOs). Martin lost to Ali after moving up three weight classes to meet at a catch weight of 162 pounds. Yet, as the saying goes, great fighters need great rivals and Martin’s biggest fight with her greatest adversary, Lucia Rijker (17-0-0, 14 KOs), never materialized. A Bob Arum-promoted Martin–Rijker showdown, dubbed “Million Dollar Lady,” was initially slated for July 30, 2005 in Las Vegas. The event’s title was a play on the 2005 Academy Award winning film Million Dollar Baby, a production that Rijker played a prominent role in. Arum offered the winning fighter a million-dollar purse. Although she lacked the American fanfare of Martin, Rijker was one of the most decorated athletes in women’s boxing. At the age of 10, Rijker was on the Dutch National Softball Team. At 13, she was the Netherlands Junior Fencing Champion. Rijker was also a four-time world champion kickboxer before turning to boxing (Wright, 1999). As a pro boxer, Rijker was trained by some of boxing’s best, including Freddy Roach and Emanuel Stewart, displaying superb technical boxing skills and impressive speed. The timing of the Martin–Rijker fight was perfect. At 37 years of age, respectively, both fighters were at the apex of their careers, considered among the best female fighters in the world. The two had been trading insults with each other for years, building hype and intrigue. Rijker even crashed one of Martin’s press conferences in 1999, challenging her to a fight, trading punches and bloody noses in what proved their only fistic encounter (Alivia, 2006). The long-awaited showdown between Martin and Rijker never happened. While sparring in a Las Vegas gym just months before their scheduled bout, Rijker ruptured her left Achilles tendon and required surgery (Springer, 2005).

At her peak, Martin captivated global audiences, establishing a foundation of legitimacy for women’s boxing, growing the sport in the US and abroad. Martin was much less active in the last six of her 23-year career as a fighter, but it was an event outside of boxing that launched her back into the public eye.

The hurt business

On November 23, 2010, Jim Martin tried to kill Christy. Several weeks before the attack Christy told Jim that she was leaving him, and was going to start a new life with a woman. Jim told Christy on several occasions during their 20-year marriage that he would kill her if she left. Those familiar with research on intimate partner violence know that the act of ending a relationship or leaving an abusive partner often puts women in life-threatening danger. It is one of the reasons it is so difficult for abused women to leave. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than half of all female homicide victims are killed by their male partners. The highest risk of women being killed by their male partners happens when they leave or during the period of separation (Petrosk et al., 2017).

The case went to trial in 2012 with civil rights and celebrity attorney Gloria Allred representing Christy, who, for a short period of time, returned to using the name Christy Salters. Over the course of the trial Christy recounted that Jim had stabbed her four times with a nine-inch Buck knife. He pistol-whipped her and bashed her head into the nightstand. Christy fought back, telling him “you cannot kill me, mother fucker” (Martin, 2014). While she was fighting back and kicking him, he sliced her calf muscle, almost shearing it off. He punctured her lung and almost detached an ear. He also shot Christy with a 9-mm Glock directly in her chest, the bullet lodged four inches from her heart. Jim then left her for dead on the bedroom floor. While he was showering to wash off the blood, Christy managed to crawl outside to the road, flagging down a car to take her to the hospital. Jim fled the house and police arrested the 67-year-old a week later. He was found hiding in a shed, just blocks from their home (Weiner, 2012). Jim Martin was charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder and one count of aggravated battery. He entered a plea of not guilty (Florida v James V Martin (2012) CF-10-16777). In what follows, I draw on an interview I conducted with Christy in April 2014, as well as her testimony from the pre-trial deposition hearings in 2011, and over 700 pages of trial transcripts from the court proceedings held April 23–27, 2012.

Through the trial and numerous media interviews, Christy revealed that her 20-year marriage to Martin was based on control, surveillance, and threats. She reasserted this claim in our interview, where she explained that over her career she was rarely out of his reach:

I had no time to get away from him. I was with him 24/7 basically. He was my coach, manager, and everything I went to he went to. He was at everything. He was always listening to what I would say. Always pointing me to the direction, make sure you talk to this person, don’t talk to that person. You know he controlled, he was the puppet master. And that is what I called him and he LOVED it, he loved it when I called him that. (Martin, 2014)

During the trial, Christy also reported that Jim blackmailed her by threatening to disclose her past involvement in same-sex relationships. Jim also had sex tapes and other footage of Christy, including some where Christy was unaware she was being filmed. He threatened to release the videos to her family, the boxing community, and the public. She explains,

He held over my head that he would blackmail me for the entire marriage and basically scared me to stay married to him; to marry him and then to stay married to him. . . I just didn’t want him to tell the boxing world that I was a lesbian. The marriage itself was to keep him quiet about my past sexual orientation and. . . sexual endeavors. (Florida v James V Martin (2012) CF-10-16777)

In the interview, Christy explained her isolation, loneliness, and unhappiness (Martin 2014). She recounted that, “for 2 to 3 years of my life I used cocaine every day – I mean almost every waking moment”. While she was training, with her hands wrapped and in boxing gloves, Jim brought her lines to ingest. At the trial, Jim’s defense team focused on her drug use. Yet, Christy explained that it was Jim who provided a steady supply of cocaine:

I was just so miserable in my day-to-day life, that . . . I stayed high from the moment I would wake up, I would stay up for three of four days, and then when – I would sleep, but as soon as I would wake up the cocaine was always readily available to me. (Florida v James V Martin (2012) CF-10-16777)

At the trial, Christy estimated that, over her boxing career, she earned US$4m. By the time she had decided to leave Jim Martin most of that money was gone. Their house was in foreclosure and she was selling off her jewelry and most of her seven cars (Martin, 2014).

Christy also revealed that there had been a history of physical abuse in her marriage. At trial, she testified that:

He had knocked me out. I have never been knocked out ever in how many fights I’ve had, almost 50. . . .He knocked me out in my own home when I lived in Flagler Beach, but he was smart. . . .He tried to knock me out with body shots so then no one can see those. At one point Jim hit me hard enough in the mouth that this scar right here [indicating], my tooth came through my lip. (Florida v James V Martin (2012) CF-10-16777)

Most of the evidence introduced at the trial focused on Jim Martin’s attempted murder of Christy on November 23 in their home in Orange County, Florida. The evidence included Christy’s medical records, which documented her life-threatening injuries, as well as the testimony of 21 people. At trial, Christy detailed what unfolded during the attack beginning in the afternoon when she was not feeling well and laid down in the bedroom to try to nap. “I heard him sharpening the knife,” explained Christy. Unable to sleep, she decided to get up and go for a run. As she was getting ready, Jim came into the room and she asked, “What, are you going to kill me?” The attack began:

. . . he hits me, bam, bam, bam, three times right here [indicating]. . . .And then the fourth one I guess he was going for my heart. I don’t know. But he stabbed me through my left breast and that’s when the blood started gushing and I realized I had been stabbed. . . .There’s four stabs total. . . .I feel the blood and so now I realize that he didn’t just hit me, that he stabbed me and the blood is coming out gushing everywhere and I tried to lean back on the bed and kind of kick him away from me so I can get free. . . .He cut my leg really bad. He cut the calf muscle almost completely from my leg. . . .I was trying to get out of the house. I was trying to get free. And he was able to get me down and he was on top of me.

. . . he took my head . . . beat my head into the floor, hit me. . . . he starts taking me and pistol-whipping me and beating my head on the dresser . . . And I said “motherfucker, you cannot kill me”. And I meant it.

. . .I had cuts. I had stiches in my head. I had cuts all over my face, cuts all over my head. . . .I couldn’t get the gun away from him, so I kicked out the clip knowing that if I could get the clip in my possession, he has one shot at me. So he’s going to have to kill me with that one shot. . . .I would beg him to: Please don’t let me die. Please call 9-1-1.

. . .I could hear my lung gurgling, so I knew my lung had collapsed, was punctured. . .. When he stood at my feet and pulled the trigger. . . .. I watched him shoot me. (Florida v James V Martin (2012) CF-10-16777)

Christy Martin’s complete testimony is captured in 84 pages of trial transcripts. After three days of the trial and hearing from all 21 witnesses, the Jury deliberated for four hours. When the jury gave their verdict, Jim Martin was found guilty of attempted second-degree murder, attempted voluntary manslaughter, and of aggravated battery. He was sentenced to 25 years minimum mandatory.

A number of media sources followed the trial, often focusing on the salacious (drug use, sex tapes, blackmail, a lesbian affair) with greater interest than the epidemic of domestic violence. For example, in 2012, The Daily Beast, an American news website that focuses on scandals in politics and pop culture, lead with the following byline, “She was the world’s most famous female boxer. He was her trainer and loving husband. But when she tried to leave him for a woman, he hatched a plot to K.O. her for good” (Ross, 2012). An Investigation Discoveries television series, Forbidden: Dying For Love, a series dedicated to “jaw-dropping stories of forbidden love” aired “Million Dollar Christy” in 2017. The episode’s description reads, “A female boxing phenom enters a forbidden relationship with her trainer. But when another secret passion bubbles to the surface and she tries to leave his controlling grip, she finds herself fighting for her life.”

“Boxing will heal me”: the boxing gym as home

While Christy was still in the hospital recovering, she decided to return to the ring. She wanted one more win to reach 50 in her career. Hall of Fame trainer Miguel Diaz agreed to train her and Bob Arum arranged to get her on a card at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles on June 4, 2011. At age 43, and just 193 days after being stabbed, beaten, and shot, Christy stepped into the ring to take on Dakota Stone. In the fourth round, while leading on the scorecards, Christy suffered an injury to her right hand, but fought on, holding the lead into the fifth round. At the end of that round, all three judges scored the bout 145 for Martin to Stone’s 138 points (Allred, 2011). In the sixth round, Martin was still winning on all three scorecards but with just 51 seconds left on the clock, the referee stopped the fight. Christy had thrown a right-handed punch and winced from the pain, turning her body momentarily away from her opponent. Although she was still ahead on points, the referee stopped the bout, giving Dakota Stone the win by technical knockout. Christy stayed in the ring and pled with officials to be allowed to continue the fight, but the decision was final. Christy and her lawyer, Gloria Allred, filed an appeal with the California State Athletic Commission to ask for a reversal of the decision to stop the fight (Allred, 2011). They argued that the “decision was the product of sexual stereotyping and sex discrimination” thereby depriving her of her 50th win. Christy Martin, Allred, and her trainer Diaz appeared before the Commission to argue that a male fighter would not have been stopped with a broken hand and that she could have won by continuing to use her left hand. Allred also prepared a press release detailing 11 bouts where male fighters (Paul Malignaggi, Wladimir Klitschko, Joe Calzaghe, and others) had broken or injured their hands but were allowed to continue to fight (Allred, 2011). The appeal, based on the grounds that the stoppage was “an unfair and sexist double standard,” failed and the loss remained on Christy Martin’s record. It is interesting to note that while she refused to campaign for gender equality in her career, making statements like, “I don’t fight for women – I fight for Christy Martin” (Hoffer, 1996), she did invoke discourses of gender inequality the one time when she felt it might have been strategically useful for her career.

X-rays showed that she had broken her hand in nine places. The surgery was expected to last two hours but took seven. During the surgery, Christy suffered a stroke that affected the right side of her body. When the anesthesia wore off, she had trouble with her vision, could barely walk or talk, and had difficulty feeding herself. She kept all of this a secret, knowing if her condition were made public that she would not fight again, and would never win that 50th bout (Feldman, 2016).

Still searching for her 50-win milestone to finish her career, Christy announced she would fight one more time before retiring, a rematch against Mia “The Knockout” St John (46-11-2, 18 KOs). St John’s boxing career trajectory followed Martin’s in several ways. Like Martin, St John signed with Don King before leaving to join Bob Arum’s Top Rank Promotions. Several of St John’s bouts were also on pay-per-view as part of Oscar De La Hoya’s cards. In 1999, St John was on the cover of Playboy magazine. She also made numerous television appearances throughout her career (Smith, 2014). The Martin–St John bout was originally scheduled for June 19, 2012, but was postponed for two months (Ortega, 2012). After the April criminal trial of Jim Martin and the June 26, 2012 sentencing hearing, Christy released a statement outlining that she was dealing with “mental and physical exhaustion” (Martin, 2017).

On August 14, 2012, St John, 45 years old, and Martin, 44 years, faced each other in a 10-round fight dubbed “Final Victory” at a casino in Friant, California, for the vacant World Boxing Council Super Welterweight Championship. Journalists had already turned their attention to the recent 2012 Olympics and the new faces of women’s boxing, including the gold-medal-winning 17-year-old, Claressa Shields. Eric Raskin (2012), a former editor of The Ring magazine, covered the event, stating that while Martin and St John remained “the two most recognizable active American boxers” in the professional ranks, they were pioneers in a sport that had gone from “sideshow to no-show”. Raskin continued,

It’s not a serious sporting event featuring the best that women’s boxing has to offer. It’s a nostalgia play featuring, sadly, the two biggest names that women’s boxing has to offer. Martin’s pursuit of a career-capping 50th win a little bit less than two years after her ex-husband stabbed and shot her makes for a compelling human interest story. But it won’t turn back the clock on her ability to fight or on women’s boxing’s place within American popular culture.

Christy Martin’s last fight was untelevised and she lost by unanimous decision. She ended her career with a record of 49-7-3. Indeed, as Raskin noted, it was time for a new crop of boxers, like Claressa Shields, to lead the sport forward.

Boxing: a site of and a sanctuary from gender-based violence

There is now a sizeable body of scholarship on gender and boxing, much of which can be traced back to Jennifer Hargreaves’ (1997) work. In particular, there is emerging historical work that addresses the erasure of women from historical treatments of the sport (Boddy, 2008; Smith, 2014; Van Ingen, 2013, 2019), as well as numerous sociological works, much of which are rooted in an auto/ethnographic approach (including Carlsson, 2017; Lafferty and McKay, 2004; Nash, 2017; Trimbur, 2013; Woodward, 2006, 2008). Relatedly, there is also robust scholarship theorizing masculinity and the ways in which gender is operationalized in boxing subcultures (Heiskanen, 2012; Matthews, 2016, 2019; Woodward, 2004, 2006).

Several boxing scholars, most notably Deborah Jump (2020), have argued that boxing needs a re-working of the masculine discourses it represents to better reflect the transformative limits of the sport. Jump’s work is focused on the ways boxing is used as a hook to support desistence from crime. While women’s boxing is rarely framed through this particular transformative lens, there is a common trope within media coverage of women’s boxing. It is frequently the case that a fighter’s personal trauma and abuse is discussed as a way of making sense of their journey into boxing. Boxing scribe Corey Erdman (2017) notes that there is nothing wrong with telling a remarkable story of a boxer who fights their way out of abuse but that “too often, women in boxing are viewed through the lens of trauma, as sympathetic characters and inspirational story subjects first, and actual athletes second”. It is important to question the dialectic that men only turn to boxing because they were “at-risk” or “getting into trouble,” while women only turn to boxing to overcome a past filled with abuse. In other words, the acceptability of female boxers should not be established in relation to their past victimization. Male boxers, doing what Carlo Rotella (1999: 569) calls the “public body work of fighting”, requires no such backstory to anchor their presence in the sport.

Yet, here is the rub. While we must question why the media discourse surrounding women boxers is intimately linked to their backstories of trauma rather than their ring work, we also cannot ignore the sexual and physical abuse, systemic racism, poverty, and struggles of some female fighters who encounter abuse inside and outside of the sport. Though my own days as a boxer were limited to a handful of amateur bouts over a four-year period, I travelled with six-time world champion, super bantamweight Lisa “Bad News” Brown to numerous world title bouts in the US, Canada, South Korea, Trinidad, and Panama. Time spent working with Brown and her trainer/husband, Errol Brown, as well as reading boxing scribes’ accounts of the sport, gave me plenty of insight into the professional boxing scene, particularly the business of women’s boxing. Insiders know boxing is a poorly regulated and widely corrupt sport. While numerous writers and scholars have covered the inner workings of professional men’s boxing, both as sport and business, women’s boxing has not received the same investigative lens. It should.

Women’s boxing, particularly in North America, does not yet have the same economic force as men’s boxing. Female pugilists often slip quietly into the background, a place where there is increased exploitation and abuse. The merits and the evils of the sport (crooked promoters, rigged decisions, economically exploited fighters) that exist in men’s boxing also exist in women’s boxing. So too does gender-based violence. Violence against women also happens within the boxing community, and its greatest impacts are experienced by women with fewer economic resources, particularly racialized women. There are times when violence against a female boxer becomes public, such as the attempted murder of Christy Martin, the 2011 shooting of German boxer Rola El-Halabi by her former manager/stepfather (ESPN, 2011), or the 2019 murder of South African boxing champion Leighandre Jegels. Jegels, who was also a world karate champion, was shot four times and killed by her police officer boyfriend, whom she had a protective order against (Breakfast, 2019). Most often, however, women boxers who experience violence, exploitation, or abuse within the sport, whether as professionals or amateurs, remain invisible. The pervasiveness of gender inequality, racism, the inadequacies of our criminal justice systems, lack of meaningful oversight, policies, or protection of athletes fosters a climate where violence against women continues. The lack of research and attention to understanding how violence impacts women boxers also keeps the issue invisible. Female boxers are framed by a larger social world, and violence on women’s bodies occurs across numerous boundaries of power and difference.

Biographical approaches often identify the social location of the author in order to make clear their role in constructing the knowledge produced as contextual and situational (Letherby, 2018; Stanley, 1993). As Letherby (2018) explains, “Auto/biography acknowledges that when we write and speak of the life of another, aspects of our self (in terms of our views, opinions, experience, relationship with the person in question and so on) influence what we say” (p.163). In addition to the ringside experiences that I have outlined above, which furthered my awareness of violence against women within the sport, much of my scholarly work has focused on gender-based violence. In 2007, I co-founded Shape Your Life (SYL), a boxing program in Toronto, Canada, for female-identified survivors of violence (Van Ingen, 2011, 2016, 2020). SYL is a free program that offers non-contact (including no-sparring) boxing, which is to say that participants are never hit – rather, they learn how to throw punches, hit the heavy bag, speed bag, and punch mitts. Over 13 years of doing this work, with over 2300 participants, there are still very few programs that address women’s bodies that have experienced violence. My own (sometimes jarring) personal encounters with participants who share their stories and experiences in the SYL boxing program also reaffirms how important a sport like boxing is for addressing the “biology of trauma”, and working with people to reconnect with their body as a source of pleasure, power, and comfort (Van Der Kolk, 2014). Increasingly, trauma researchers, like Van Der Kolk (2014), tell us that healing from violence depends, in part, on experiential knowledge. In other words, to heal from violence and trauma you have to deal with the imprint of trauma on the body (Menakem, 2017). For some, boxing provides one way to regain self-mastery, to have experiences that contradict the loss of control they experienced in their bodies. This is, I would argue, why boxing can hold such an important place in the lives of some women who have experienced violence and abuse, including professional boxers like Heather Hardy, Shelley Vincent, Claressa Shields, Tyrieshia Douglas, among others, who have shared their stories of abuse and trauma. This, of course, does not mean that all women in boxing have been abused, nor that abused women turn to boxing. Rather, boxing can be an important part of healing from abuse and violence. Christy Martin made the decision to return to boxing while she was still in the Orlando Regional Medical Center with wounds that had not yet started to heal. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, she explained that boxing “was the best therapy I could find” (Feldman, 2016).

Thomas Hauser (2000) notes that boxing is a sport that is irresistible to chroniclers. In my view, it would be much more accurate to state that men’s boxing is a sport that is irresistible to chroniclers. Boxing scribes and historians have long overlooked and ignored women in the fight game (Van Ingen, 2013, 2020). There remains much to be written about women’s boxing and Christy Martin is an important part of the history of the sport. Christy was at the epicenter of the modern boxing boom, and a fighter whose presence helped to usher women’s boxing into the mainstream. At the same time that she became the greatest draw in the history of women’s boxing, she refused to use her platform to spearhead the sport’s growth. Christy survived an abusive marriage with her boxing trainer and an attempt on her life. A 23-year professional career left her one win short of 50.

After her retirement from the sport, Christy Martin returned to substitute teaching. In 2016, she launched a boxing promotions company, Christy Martin Promotions, based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. She also turned to advocacy work, speaking out against domestic violence and lobbying for better protections from gun violence. Speaking on Capitol Hill and giving testimony to senators working on ways to address gun violence and update the federal Violence Against Women Act, Martin joined efforts by organizations like Mayors Against Illegal Guns, encouraging lawmakers to support comprehensive background checks (Hearing on Violence Against Women Act Next Steps: Protecting Women from Gun Violence, 2014). In 2017, Martin married Lisa Holewyne, who is also a former professional boxer.

The International Boxing Hall of Fame (IBHOF) has six categories for inductees: Men’s Modern Boxers, Women’s Modern Boxers, Men’s Old Timer Boxers, Women’s Trailblazer Boxers, Pioneers, Observers, and Non-Participants. Prior to 2020, only one woman had ever been inducted into the IBHOF – Aileen Eaton, a boxing promoter – who was inducted in 2002; 2020 marked the first year that women were included on the IBHOF ballot as boxers. Christy Martin and Lucia Rijker were inducted in the Modern category, and Barbara Buttrick in the Trailblazers category. In 2016, Martin also became the first female boxer inducted into the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame. Martin had already been enshrined in the inaugural class of the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame in 2014, along with Lucia Riker and Laila Ali. Christy Martin’s career, particularly in the mid-1990s, was powerfully illustrative of the pitfalls, potential, and popularity of women’s boxing. The impact of her career is undeniable.¹ Her career is also a powerful example of the devastating impact of gender-based violence, and the ways in which boxing can be both a site of and a sanctuary from violence.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I extend my deepest appreciation to Christy Martin for her interview and for her advocacy work on gender-based violence. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and critical reading of this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Cathy van Ingen

Notes

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