Christy Martin\u2019s life story feels made for the movies. From humble beginnings, she became one of the most successful female boxers of the 1990s. She\u2019s also a survivor, overcoming adversity and violence to become the person she was always meant to be.<\/p>\n
In the film Christy, which opened in theaters on November 7, Sydney Sweeney<\/a> plays Martin, a West Virginia native who earned the nickname \u201cthe Coal Miner\u2019s Daughter\u201d when she became a professional boxer at 21. During her meteoric rise in the sport, she was also covering up her true identity as a queer woman, marrying her manager, Jim Martin, who emotionally and physically abused her while siphoning off her prize money. This abuse turned life-threatening in 2010 when he stabbed and shot her, leaving her for dead. She survived the attack and eventually found a happy relationship with Lisa Holewyne, her former boxing rival.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was the ultimate underdog\u2014she was fighting her biggest battle outside of the ring,\u201d says Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, one of the film\u2019s producers. \u201cI felt like, how has this story not been told? Because it\u2019s got all the elements that you look for in a film: a heroic character, a woman taking control of her life for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n Martin was at first apprehensive about having her story depicted in a movie, says Kohansky-Roberts. \u201cPeople are distrusting when Hollywood calls,\u201d she says. \u201cSo it was a matter of just listening.\u201d Writer-director David Mich\u00f4d and writer Mirrah Foulkes spent a great deal of time with Martin in order to hear her story and ensure they got it right. Martin took Foulkes around Florida, including the home where she lived with Jim and where the violent attack occurred. \u201cI guess you always second-guess any big decision in life: \u2018Is this really what I should have done?\u2019 But I had many conversations with David and Mirrah and they gained my trust,\u201d Martin tells Vanity Fair.<\/p>\n Martin was surprised at first to hear that Sweeney, best known at the time for her roles on Euphoria and the rom-com Anyone But You, would play her in the film. \u201cShe\u2019s shiny and she\u2019s sexy Sydney, and beautiful and all those things,\u201d says Martin. \u201cHow is she going to get down and dirty and be Christy Martin?\u201d But Sweeney put in the work, spending months learning to box and gaining more than 30 pounds for the role. \u201cI felt very strong and powerful,\u201d Sweeney previously told Vanity Fair.<\/a> \u201cI loved it. Being able to lose myself to become a vessel for somebody else is my dream.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christy Martin\u2019s life story feels made for the movies. From humble beginnings, she became one of the most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276304,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85,30000],"class_list":{"0":"post-276303","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-sydney-sweeney"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}