Insane story behind world champion athlete set to be played by Sydney Sweeney in Hollywood movie

Almost 15 years have passed since the night she was stabbed repeatedly, shot in the torso and left for dead in a deranged attack by her abusive ex-husband. Yet for Christy Martin, the harrowing memory of November 23, 2010 will never fade.

'I was laying on the floor bleeding. I could hear my lung gurgling because it was punctured,' the women's boxing legend recalls in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail.

'I looked through the ceiling air conditioning vent and it was like my eyes were right to God's.

'And I said, "Please let me get out of here."'

Martin, a former super-welterweight world champion and true pioneer of the women's game, has a story outside the ropes so dramatic that it has now been turned into a Hollywood biopic, with her character portrayed by A-lister Sydney Sweeney.

Sweeney tells the disturbing tale of the boxing hall of famer's marriage to her coach and manager, Jim Martin, and the shocking manner in which years of psychological torment violently came to a head on that infamous evening.

Two days after she told him she wanted a divorce, Jim took a nine-inch Buck knife and plunged it into his wife's torso at their home in the suburban neighborhood of Apopka, Florida. He then jabbed it in three more times before a fourth puncture ripped into her right breast, and a fifth tore down her calf to leave eight inches of flesh detached from the bone.

After a frenzy which at one stage saw him slash his own palm on the blade and drop it, Jim responded by pulling out a pink pistol, slapping it across Christy's jaw and firing a bullet into her chest. It landed just three inches from her heart.

He then headed to the bathroom to take a shower and wash away the evidence, seemingly under the impression that his murderous task was complete. But he was wrong.

'I'm pretty sure he thought I was dead,' Martin says. 'I heard the shower water turn on and I was like, that's my time. That's the only way I was gonna get out.'

In a moment befitting of Hollywood, Christy got back to her feet and made her great escape; somehow limping out the front door and making it to the middle of the street before flagging down an approaching car. The driver nodded for her to get in and dialed 911 as she climbed into the back seat, rushing her straight to the emergency room.

Martin has lived to tell the tale thanks to the near-miss of the bullet, which surgeons had to remove after it failed to pass all the way through her. 'It was actually lodged in my back because it went through as I was laying on the cement floor,' she adds.

For more than a decade the iconic fighter has continued to raise awareness about the horrors of domestic abuse, something she experienced both physically and emotionally during her marriage with Jim.

The pair first met back in 1989, when Christy was 22 and in the early stages of her boxing career and Jim was a 47-year-old head coach at a boxing gym in Bristol, Tennessee. Within just two years their relationship moved on from fighter and trainer-turned-manager when they tied the knot in Daytona Beach, Florida, at City Hall. Yet Christy, who by her own admission has always been bisexual, says she was never in love. The marriage was a business decision.

'He was a great narcissist,' she says. 'He told me so many crazy stories that he knew Don King or he knew this person and that person in boxing, and I became enamored with the persona of Jim Martin.

'I don't think I ever was in love with him, but I loved boxing and I really loved what we were doing together. We were building this career and I trusted him.

'And that was a big mistake.'

The psychological abuse had started before she had even said 'I do.' In fact, it was one of the reasons she reluctantly uttered those words. 'He said if you don't marry me, your family is going to disown you,' she remembers. 'If you're with a woman, they're going to disown you. And if you don't marry me, they're going to disown you. Which was a lie.

'But at that particular moment, I'm 22 years old. I'm young. I'm spinning around like which way do I go? And I chose to go with Jim Martin, which boxing wise was a great choice. In front of the camera, I had a great 15 years. And then behind the camera it was hell.'

Martin certainly did reap the rewards of her decision from a career standpoint.

Prior to the night she narrowly escaped death, the 'Coal Miner's Daughter' (a nickname rooted in her father's past in West Virginia) racked up 49 wins in 57 fights, including 32 by knockout. She collected over $4million in earnings and clinched the WBC super-welterweight championship in the 57th and final bout before Jim's attempt on her life. She also boxed on some illustrious undercards, such as the 1996 Mike Tyson vs Frank Bruno world heavyweight title contest in Las Vegas. 'Without that night and that exposure, my career would have never taken off,' she claims.

Martin, the first ever woman signed by legendary promoter Don King, also became one of the first commercially successful female stars of the sport, appearing on a number of popular TV shows at the peak of her powers, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and gracing the front cover of Sports Illustrated.

Unbeknown to her at the time was that she had made a deal with the devil in the process. 

Jim, who is said to have left her alone for only two nights during their entire 20-year marriage, controlled every aspect of Christy's life. He read through her emails and texts, kept a suffocating grip on her money and spent it freely on himself. According to Martin, Jim even led her to cocaine addiction after supplying her with the drug and allegedly holding it over her head like a treat for a dog, something he later denied.

And if she had any brave ideas about ending the torment, the consequences would be fatal. 'He told me for 20 years he would kill me if ever I left, even before I married him,' Christy reveals.

'At the beginning, at like 22 or 23 years old, I'm laughing it off like it's a joke. I don't know the exact moment, but at some point it changed and I knew that he was going to kill me.'

'It wasn't always physical with him,' she continues. 'It was more about control. He kept everybody away from me; my family, my friends. I wasn't able to stay friends with anybody that I had gone to high school or college with. There was nobody that I was allowed to continue to talk to. 

'It just got to the point where I didn't care one way or the other if I lived or died. I just needed to get away.'

Eight months before she came three inches from death, Martin reconnected with Sherry Lusk,a former romantic partner from her high-school days. The reconnection began on Facebook before progressing to texts and phone calls. Sherry quickly sensed her old friend was in danger.

By the time they agreed to meet face-to-face on November 18, for a spot of lunch that both parties insist was arranged purely as friends, Christy had plucked up the courage to tell Jim she was divorcing him. He responded by doubling down on the gruesome threat he made at the very start of their marriage, and Martin believed it.

'I had told everybody goodbye. I went around, I saw my friends, I called one of my best friends and was telling her goodbye. She didn't really know I was telling her goodbye. Then I told Sherry that he's going to kill me,' she claims.

'I knew he was going to kill me, so I was telling them goodbye, thanks for being a friend. They didn't understand what I was doing, but I knew what I was doing.'

While he certainly came close, Jim ultimately failed to follow through on his twisted promise. Multiple stabbings and a shooting, which came after he had caught wind of Christy's link-up with her old flame, was not enough to floor her to the point of no return. 'He never was able to really complete a project,' she says with a wry smile. 'I used to tell him, "You never get anything done." And that's just one of the things that I'm glad he didn't complete.'

In 2012 Jim was found guilty of attempted second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison, the mandatory minimum sentence. He had pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder, attempted manslaughter and aggravated battery.

The former manager claimed he didn't stab or shoot his wife, instead arguing that a gun was misfired during a struggle between them.

'So your theory is a bullet magically ricocheted down, cut her calf in half, bounced back and just happened to end up in the middle of her chest?' lead prosecutor Ryan Vescio asked him during cross-examination.

Before he was sentenced to a quarter of a century behind bars, Christy concluded her own testimony in court by getting the most satisfying of final jabs in to her tormentor. Prosecutors watched on in dread as she made a sudden beeline for Jim, who was 68 at the time, before she leaned in towards him and said: 'I hope you rot in hell, you motherf***er.'

Then justice prevailed. 'When they called and said we have a verdict, I thought the feeling would be a little bit like a close boxing match and you're waiting on the decision. No... it was probably the scariest feeling I've ever had,' she remembers.

'It was the first time where I thought, what if they don't believe me? Because I knew I was telling the truth, I knew what the truth was, so I didn't think there was any other option. But now 12 other people are going to say whether they believe the truth or not. So it's scary.'

The jury did believe it. Almost halfway through his sentence Jim died in prison at the age of 80. 

And despite coming out on top in court, there is part of Christy that will always feel unfulfilled because of one gruesome question that was left unanswered.

'I wish I would have had one more conversation with him, and I don't know why. I just wish I could have asked him what he was going to do with my body,' she admits. 'Not that he would tell me the truth, because he never told the truth. So I feel like it was left a little uncompleted, a little unfinished with Jim Martin.

'I wish he would have lived a little longer so he could suffer. I feel like if I had to suffer for 20 years, he should have to suffer for 20 plus.

'But he'll have to face God.'

Now Martin's inspiring escape from the clutches of a manipulative and controlling predator is set to hit the big screens. Sweeney, one of the most famous actresses on the planet with over 25 million followers on Instagram, was tasked with playing the boxing great. The biopic, the title of which has not yet been released, was shot last year and is expected to be released in November.

To do so, the White Lotus and Euphoria star had to bulk up her body like never before, working out three times a day and eating every 30 minutes to keep the weight on. 'Literally, a Chick-fil-A sandwich every hour and a milkshake,' she said in a recent interview with The Times. 'It was amazing to feel like I was turning into someone else.'

Sweeney even joined Martin at the 2025 International Boxing Hall of Fame Parade in Canastona, New York, over the weekend, with the pair waving to fans while riding through the streets on the back seat of a convertible.

Speaking a few months before the parade, Christy describes the actress as a 'perfectionist'. 'She was really serious about her boxing,' Martin gushes. 'And with depicting the domestic violence she wanted to make sure everything was right.'

Christy still doesn't know how to feel about seeing her life story, and a uniquely traumatizing one at that, retold on a film set.

'It's a crazy, strange feeling. This is my life,' Martin explains. 'You see all the trucks and all the people, and then I was like, "Oh s***, this is my life."'

'I hope that with the film people see an underdog story,' she adds. 'You know, if I can do it, you can do it. 

'With domestic violence specifically, there's somebody out there that can help you. They can help you and they will help you. You just have to reach out to them.'

The night she was almost murdered by her ex-husband is not the only astonishing chapter in Martin's story. In a happier turn of events she finally found true love with one of her former opponents.

Five years after Jim's sentencing, Christy married Lisa Holewyne, whom she defeated in the ring via unanimous decision back in 2001. The old rivals now live happily together in Texas.

'The craziest thing is I actually told everybody that I knew back then in 2017, "Look, if I come to you and talk to you about anybody [romantically] that I'm serious about, smack me upside the head, shake me. Do whatever you have to do,' Martin jokes.

'And boom, here comes Lisa. And I didn't give anybody the opportunity to shake me.'