By Thomas Gerbasi

Boxing was always the easy part for Christy Martin. It was everything else around it that occupied her mind and made her seek refuge in a place you wouldn’t expect to find peace. But she could always hit the heavy bag or her opponents and escape for a while from the mental and physical abuse that awaited her back at home.

And there was seemingly no escape from that. For 20 years, Martin and her then-husband Jim put on a face for the world that portrayed them as the most unlikely boxing success story ever. Christy was “The Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Jim the man in the corner and behind the scenes who made it all possible. From Don King undercards to the cover of Sports Illustrated, it was the American Dream playing out before our eyes, though it was never what it seemed.

That was evident when news broke that on November 23, 2010, Jim Martin stabbed his wife several times and then shot her. Left for dead in their Florida home, Christy was eventually able to escape and make it out to the street, where she flagged down a passing car which took her to a local hospital. She survived, and the story shocked anyone who saw it.

“So many people that saw me fight saw me as a strong woman and someone that would never live in a domestic violence-filled relationship, not knowing the truth that I was in a terrible relationship for 20 years,” she said. “And if it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone.”

Nearly five years later, Christy Martin is not the same person she was back then. She’s taken her name back, going with her maiden name, Salters, and she is working as a substitute teacher in North Carolina. Jim Martin was convicted of attempted second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison in June of 2012. 68 at the time of his conviction, the odds of him ever seeing life outside of a cell are slim.

There is plenty of life left in the 47-year-old Salters though. In addition to her school teaching gig, she keeps up with the sport that made her name over the course of 59 fights from 1989 to 2012. Her last bout was a decision loss to Mia St. John, and while it’s been over three years since that fight, she still gets that itch to put the gloves on.

“Every morning,” she laughs. “I get up at 5:15 every day and I substitute teach, and I’m thinking ‘man, I should just be out running.’ Then come back and get ready to go to the gym. Every day I get the itch and every day I think I can do it. I go to the gym some days and it doesn’t take long. Two rounds and I’m loving it, but no way could I get back in shape. It’s in your blood though. It’s the worst drug ever.”

True, but it also kept her sanity while she lived in her private hell for two decades, unable to change the situation or more importantly, leave it.

“I know people are questioning why I didn’t leave, because I was the money maker, I was the product, and I would say ‘yeah, I should have left,’ but he had threatened to kill me for 20 years,” Salters explains. “He said ‘if you leave me, I don’t care if it’s for a man, woman, animal, it doesn’t matter. If you leave me, I’m gonna kill you.’ At first in my relationship with him, I kind of laughed it off, but over and over he would say this, and finally at some point I was like ‘this guy’s not kidding; he’s going to kill me.’ And I stayed because it was easier for me to stay and only I had to deal with what he puts out. If I go somewhere, if I try to go where my family is, then I put everybody around me in danger.”

It’s a familiar story, and during October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, it bears repeating, because so many people stay in abusive relationships, hoping that the abuser will change his or her ways, that things will ultimately get better. Salters wants to make one thing abundantly clear: it won’t change unless you change it.

“My advice is that there’s always someone out there you can reach out to,” she said. “It doesn’t get better, you’re not gonna change him, and when the threats start coming, you have to make a move.”

Salters’ voice is one of experience, but it only came with a lot of heartache before the night of November 23, 2010. She didn’t leave, so in response, “I married boxing. I put all my focus into not just my career, but my amateur team and I worked managing a couple pros. And that’s the way it was. He still controlled most of the moves, but I tried to put as much distance between him and me as possible.”

What may have been even worse was that a lot of the abuse was mental and emotional, leaving Salters with scars that no one could see. If there was a bruise, it could be a signal to the world; but being verbally abused and threatened gives no one any inkling that something is wrong.

“That was probably 95 percent of my abuse,” she admits. “When you talk about emotional and mental abuse, you can’t show bruises, you can’t show broken bones. So how do you make people understand that, especially people that have never been exposed to any type of domestic violence? How can you convince them or make them understand that I’m in a bad situation and I need help? That was where I was.

“People that were close to me and knew me, and maybe even some of the media, I’m not sure, they all knew that Jim worked as what I called ‘the puppet master,’” Salters continues. “It was my mouth moving but his words coming out most of the time. He controlled who I talked to, who I didn’t talk to, who I was nice to, who I wasn’t nice to. If I talked to somebody who he thought I shouldn’t, then I had to deal with that. And again, most of the time it wasn’t physical, but it was mental and emotional, and it’s sad to say, but sometimes I would rather it had been physical, and then I could have gone to somebody and said ‘look what he’s doing to me.’ But that wasn’t the case. And as my boxing career grew, his pressure and control grew, because now I had more at stake.”

Salters’ career landed her in the inaugural class of the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame in 2014, a remarkable accomplishment considering what she was dealing with while showing off her lethal left hook and defeating the likes of Deirdre Gogarty, Marcela Eliana Acuna, Belinda Laracuente and Kathy Collins.

By the time of her assault though, she hadn’t fought in over a year, having broken her hand in a 2009 win over Dakota Stone, her 49th as a pro and one that earned the women’s boxing pioneer her first world title. And even though everything soon came crashing down, her first thoughts while in the hospital had nothing to do with the recent trauma and coming to grips with it, but with returning to the ring.

“I didn’t want to deal with it,” she said. “So the first thing I did the day they let me out of the hospital, I went to the boxing gym. While I was in the hospital, I told everybody, I’m gonna fight again. I called Miguel Diaz and asked him if he would train me.”

Diaz agreed and called Bob Arum to see about getting Salters a fight. The Top Rank boss put her on the Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.-Sebastian Zbik card at Staples Center in Los Angeles on June 4, 2011. 

“It was great to get back into the boxing world and what made me happy,” she said, but Salters lost her rematch with Stone, breaking her hand once more, prompting a sixth-round stoppage in a fight she was winning. Then things got even worse.

“I broke my hand in the fight with Dakota Stone, and when they put me to sleep to fix my hand, I had a stroke,” Salters said. “So a little over six months after being shot, stabbed and left for dead, I have a stroke. When I finally come to, I can’t walk, I can’t talk, I can’t feed myself, I can’t see clearly. I just tried not to deal with any of it. Finally, I get back on my feet, I get my balance somewhat back, I can walk, I can feed myself, and I said I’m gonna fight again. I’m just not gonna tell anybody I had the stroke.”

Salters did fight once more, losing her rematch with St. John, who she had defeated in 2002. This time, she realized that continuing to box could cost her more than just a couple losses.

“There was so much going on – I was trying to overcome the stroke, I had the trial going on – and I just couldn’t pull it together. Now, of course, I think, man that was really stupid.”

Her retirement forced her to finally deal with everything that happened over the past 20 years, and like anything of this nature, it’s a process that doesn’t get resolved overnight.

“I just went to what made me happy and comfortable, instead of dealing with this trauma,” Salters said. “But now my life has slowed down, it’s much quieter, and I have to deal with it. We’re almost coming up on five years next month, and now it’s truly hitting home.”

Life isn’t perfect, but Salters knows that she’s in a much better place than she was five years ago. She does want to make a point about the aftermath of domestic violence relationships, and how they can continue to affect those who survived, as well as those around them.

“After going through this, I had a lot of anger, so I think that we, as survivors, have to be careful to not victimize the new people in our lives, because we are angry, and sometimes that anger is off the charts,” she said.

But now she’s free, and in the process of starting over. That’s not to say there weren’t good times before, especially when they had to do with the sport she loves.

“Do I miss the Tyson days and the King days and fighting on those cards and fighting in the Garden? Absolutely. Just being around the fights and the fighters, of course I miss that.”

There will be new memories. As for the old ones, she’ll revisit them soon enough, as she signed a deal for a movie about her life, with the script penned by respected Hollywood writer Katherine Fugate.

“That will be a different kind of experience for me and a different kind of excitement, I hope,” Salters said. “I know there will be some good and bad reliving parts of my life, but it will be interesting.”

At least the Christy Salters story now has a happy ending.

For more information on Domestic Violence Awareness Month, visit