When your life story has been deemed worthy of being told in a major Hollywood movie, you’ve got a tale to tell.
For starters, Christy Martin is regarded as the fighter who legitimized women’s boxing, a two-time world champion who, while scoring a remarkable 31 knockouts (unheard of in women’s boxing), suffered unimaginable indignities while trying to establish herself in a man’s world.
Growing up, she was a scholar-athlete who earned all-state honors as a high school basketball player, and played in college on scholarship, but became enamored with fighting after competing in tough-woman competitions in smoky barrooms.
Near the end of her illustrious pro boxing career, Martin was stabbed multiple times by her husband/trainer, Jim Martin, who left her for dead, then returned 30 minutes later and shot her for good measure, narrowly missing her heart. She survived to tell the tale — a story she shares nowadays with other domestic violence victims. Meanwhile, he’s serving 25 years in a penitentiary for attempted murder.
“The Coal Miner’s Daughter” paints a vivid picture of all of the above — sometimes in gory detail — in our riveting, in-depth interview.
Before that, we get a thorough breakdown of this Saturday’s big fights — Santa Cruz-Mares II, Crawford-Horn, and Tyson Fury’s comeback — from expert analysts Travis Hartman, Rizwaan Zahid, and John J. Raspanti, who also talk about Billy Joe Saunders’ withdrawal from yet-another date with Martin Murray — is he really injured, or simply angling for a big-money showdown with Canelo or GGG? — and Robert Easter’s degree of readiness for his July 28 title unifier against Mikey Garcia.
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