Meet Christy Martin’s Wife Lisa Holewyne – Is She Also a Boxer? All About the Boxing Legend’s Personal Life

There’s a blockbuster in the making, as Sydney Sweeney gears up to get in shape for portraying one of boxing’s biggest female stars, Christy Martin. ‘The King’s David Michôd, in collaboration with Mirrah Foulkes, will write the storyline for the yet-to-be-titled biopic on Martin’s rise to boxing brilliance, but also her hidden, traumatic personal life that came close to ending in November 2010. But what about Lisa Holewyne?

For those unaware, Martin, a coal miner’s daughter, grew up homosexual in a conservative family in a small town in Virginia. Yet, she ended up marrying a man, her manager, Jim Martin. But it’s the boxing ring where she didn’t just find solace, but also her life partner. Here’s everything one needs to know about Martin’s wife Lisa Holewyne. 

Who is Christy Martin’s wife? How did they meet?

While not as decorated as Martin, Lisa Holewyne has a story of her own! The Kauai, Hawaii-born Women’s Boxing Hall of Famer was a competent boxer and the much-needed support system for Martin. Interestingly, they met years before sparks of love flew between the two boxing legends, that too, in the place they loved the most. 

Martin and Holewyne fought each other all the way back in November 2001 at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, a fight that Martin won via a unanimous decision. But who would have thought it would be Holewyne who would win Martin’s heart years later? As to how they fell in love, who better to tell that story than Christy Martin herself?

In a June 2022 interview with The Guardian, Martin revealed, “We fought each other in 2001. She’s a world champion. She was inducted into the Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame. So we met and then we spared a couple of times, and she was sort of in my circle of people, one of the adjacent friends. And a few months after everything happened, and the trial with Jim, she started to call and check on me. And then she came to one of my fights that I was promoting in Charlotte and we’ve been together since.”

Lisa Holewyne’s boxing record

So, how good was Holewyne? If her resume is any evidence, Lisa ‘Ann’ Holewyne was a hell of a boxer. The Houston, Texas resident began her boxing career in the middle of June 1998 against Robyn Covino, winning the four-two-minute round bout via a unanimous decision. However, her win streak didn’t last very long, as her third professional fight was declared a draw.

What followed was a two-fight losing streak for the Hawaiian native, which would become a regular occurrence every so often. However, in the span of her eight-year-long boxing career, Holewyne fought numerous formidable opponents, winning some and losing some. By 2006, Holewyne was losing her mileage, as she ended her career with a final win over Tonya Gallegos. After all was said and done, ‘Ann’ had a professional boxing record of 25-17-2 with 8 KO wins. 

Christy Martin’s controversial relationship with ex-partner

‘Coalminer’s Daughter’ began her boxing journey as soon as she could—in 1987, to be exact, the first year women were allowed to box. In 1990, Christy met a trainer, Jim Martin, and a year later, he was on his knees, proposing marriage. Despite her success in the coming years, the female boxing legend never became comfortable with her fame and the credit for that goes to Jim!

“He told me the boxing world hated me, that my family hated me, that I didn’t have any fans. Athletes have heavy egos, but they’re fragile. And it didn’t take long for him to break me,” said Christy Martin to The New York Times. Adding to this, Jim knew Christy’s biggest secret—that she was gay. She had told him about it when they had started working together, but Jim chose to ignore it. 

As the fateful year of 2010 came around, her career and her marriage were on its last legs. “Jim told me for 20 years that he would kill me if I ever left him. Twenty years. At the beginning, I was young, 22, 23 years old, and I would kind of laugh it off. ‘Ah, this is crazy. Sometimes people say crazy s**t.’ But somewhere in the middle of those two decades, I realized no, this is how it’s gonna end for me.” said Martin. 

In November of that year, Christy was in her Tampa, Florida home with Jim, napping, when the incident happened. Christy distinctly heard Jim sharpening his knife, having heard her husband say over the phone that she was a lesbian and that she was leaving him for a woman. As the seconds passed, Jim came into the room and started stabbing Christy relentlessly in her chest and legs. The horror didn’t stop there! To finish what he started, Jim took Christy’s own pink-handled 9-millimeter Glock and shot her in the chest. 

Christy remembers the horror of that day like the incident happened just yesterday. Reflecting on the horrific incident, she said, “From the time Jim started stabbing me the whole thing lasted an hour and two minutes. So, for most of that hour, I had already been stabbed. My lung was punctured. Every time I did try to stand, blood would squirt out of the stab holes. And my leg, the calf, had come away from the bone and was just hanging there. So I’d lay back down. And then he shot me in the chest.”

After somehow gathering herself, she went outside to her car but realized that she had picked up the wrong keys. So, she immediately made her way to the road, seeking help from a passing car. The first one whizzed past her, and she thought it could not happen again if she wanted to live. “And thank goodness, my angel, Rick Cole, he picked me up,” said Martin. In 2012, Jim Martin was sentenced to 25 years in prison!

Years later, in 2017, she would marry Lisa Holewyne, and the couple are still happily living together. Speaking about marrying Lisa, Martin said, “It’s never been about making me happy until I married Lisa [Holewyne]. I called my mother, and I told her that we were getting married and she said, ‘No, you’re not,’ like I was 12 years old. I said, ‘I lived 20 years making you happy. I’m going to live the next 20 years making me happy.’”

Lisa Holewyne and Christy Martin’s journey together is a powerful one. Christy Martin endured unimaginable adversity, but Lisa Holewyne became a beacon of hope in her darkest time. Their bond is truly inspiring. What are your thoughts on this couple’s remarkable story?