Christy Martin’s Husband: Who Was She Married To? All About the Boxing Legend’s Controversial Relationship

The Mullens, West Virginia-born Christy Martin, has been a fighter throughout her life. Both inside the ring and outside of it. Her first professional match on September 9, 1989, which also marks her debut, went for a draw. Then, two months later, she suffered her first loss. But the setbacks only strengthened her resolve and focus. For the next ten years, barring another draw, she remained unbeaten until Laila Ali stopped her on the way to becoming a world champion. It took her another six years to become a world champion. But Martin’s happiness proved short-lived. Roughly a year after she became a world champion, her world came crumbling down.

On November 23, 2010, her husband, Jim Martin, who was also her boxing trainer, stabbed and shot at her. Then a WBC super welterweight champion, Christy Martin, miraculously survived. Jim Martin was subsequently arrested. In a trial that followed in 2012, he was convicted and sentenced to a jail term. So who was Jim Martin? What happened on that fateful day? Let’s look at the answers to a few of these questions.

Jim Martin: How did Christy and Jim Martin meet? When did they get married?

Reportedly, Christy Martin and then Christy Salters met Jim Martin in the late 1980s. She was 22 years old while he was 47. It seems he was well respected in the boxing circles as a trainer. Soon, he accepted the responsibility of training her. Two years after she commenced her professional journey, in 1991, they got married.

In an interview, Christy Martin shared that after marriage, they relocated to Apopka, a city in Orange County, Florida. The couple started a boxing gym while focusing on her burgeoning career. But things weren’t as they appeared. According to Christy Martin, Jim Martin, though not a keen supporter of women’s entry into boxing, saw her as a medium for making money. Speaking with journalist David Begnaud, she said, “… he thought… It’ll be a sideshow, but I think I can get her in position where we can make some money.”

That’s not all; it seems Jim Martin eventually came to know about a secret Christy Martin had kept all along. It was sometime when she was in fifth or sixth grade that the future boxing champion realized that she was attracted to women. According to a piece in the New York Times, she had confided the details regarding her sexuality with Jim Martin.

But as Christy Martin shared, it only resulted in him taking control of her life, issuing frequent threats that he would reveal all the details to the world. Afraid of being exposed to or facing any sort of physical harm, she, it seems, decided to stay with him, until 2010, when the situation plummeted to its lowest point.

The horrendous episode involving Christy and Jim Martin

By 2010, Christy Martin had rekindled her relationship with a childhood sweetheart. She had decided to part ways with Jim Martin, who, it appears, wasn’t too welcoming of the decision. On November 23, while she was in the bedroom, Jim Martin walked in with a knife. He stabbed her multiple times, in places including her chest and legs.

Thereafter, he shot at her chest with a 9-mm Glock, which apparently belonged to her. Fatally wounded, Jim Martin, it seems thought that she had died. During the interview with David Benaud, Christy Martin said, “He missed my heart by three inches. … I passed out. And he thought I was dead.”

But she was alive. About an hour after the stabbing had begun, the world champion, finding that Jim Martin was taking a shower, made a desperate run. She tried fleeing in her car, but unfortunately, she had picked up the wrong pair of keys. Left with no choice, she ran towards the road. She saw a car passing by and signaled it to stop. The stranger, whose name eventually came out as Rick Cole, took her to the hospital, where she was shifted to the emergency room. Police arrested Jim Martin after he had been on the run for seven days.

Where is Jim Martin now?

Six months after the horrendous incident, Christy Martin faced Dakota Stone in a rematch. She lost the match via technical knockout. The case went to trial in April 2012. Jim Martin was found guilty of attempted second-degree homicide. Awarded a 25-year prison sentence, he is currently serving time at the Graceville Correctional Facility, located in Florida’s Jackson County. He will be reportedly out of jail only by 2035. By that time, he will be 91 years old.

Next month, on June 12, Christy Martin will turn 66. Long retired from boxing, she now runs her own promotional venture, Christy Martin Promotions. In addition, she also oversees her program, Christy’s Champs, to help victims of domestic violence and survivors of physical and emotional abuse. She eventually came out and married a boxer whom she fought back in 2001, Lisa Holewyne.

From a champion boxer to a keen supporter of social causes, for ‘The Coal Miner’s Daughter’, it seems life has come full circle, and she is now giving back all the love she received all through these years.

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