The Moving True Story Behind <i>Christy</i>, Sydney Sweeney’s Boxing Biopic

Minor spoilers below.

If you heard the beats of professional boxer Christy Martin’s story, you might think it has the goods for a film adaptation—and you’d be right. Hailing from West Virginia, “the Coal Miner’s Daughter” made a splash on the 1990s boxing scene as one of its most decorated fighters, all while juggling her closeted homosexuality and an abusive marriage that nearly killed her. Now her life is being immortalized on-screen in Christy, a biopic starring Sydney Sweeney as the titular boxer. The film, now in theaters, promises to tell her story almost exactly as it happened.

Sweeney teamed up with director David Michôd and co-writer Mirrah Foulkes to bring Martin’s story to the masses—something Martin was initially skeptical about. “She had this idea that we were going to Hollywood-ize her life, and she was sort of steeling herself for that,” Foulkes told TIME in September 2025. But the end result received Martin’s stamp of approval in the form of a phone call. “Christy doesn’t bullsh*t you,” Foulkes said. “You can tell when she likes something and when she doesn’t. We were just so relieved by her response.”

As Christy opens in theaters, here’s a rundown of Christy Martin’s true story—and what, if anything, the filmmakers changed for their retelling.

Christy doesn’t shy away from discussing Martin’s sexuality—in fact, according to TIME, the only liberty the filmmakers took was creating a single composite character meant to represent two of Martin’s ex-girlfriends.

According to CBS News, Martin realized she was a lesbian in the fifth or sixth grade, though she didn’t tell anyone until she met her high school sweetheart Sherry Lusk. When her parents found out, it created a large rift within the family, and Martin felt forced out of her home. The biopic reenacts this portion of her life by depicting her close, romantic teenage relationship with a basketball teammate, much to the chagrin of her mother (played by Merritt Wever).

But the mother-daughter relationship was likely strained even before Martin’s self-discovery; in her memoir Fighting for Survival, Martin also details being sexually assaulted by a family friend when she was six years old—a secret she kept because of her mother’s close relationship with the abuser’s grandmother. The film doesn’t explicitly mention this event but depicts her mother as someone who didn’t seem to prioritize Martin’s happiness or well-being throughout her life.

Sweeney (right) as Christy Martin.

In real life, Martin confided in her manager-turned-husband, Jim Martin, about her identity, her sexual abuse, and her contentious relationship with her mother—all of which he weaponized to control her. “He would always say, ‘I’m gonna tell the world you’re a lesbian.’ And for whatever reason, I just wasn’t strong enough in me to say, ‘Go ahead.’ I know people think I should be strong and tough and all those things, but I didn’t have that same type of mental strength to overtake him,” she told CBS News.

The boxing champion’s mom never entirely accepted her daughter’s sexuality. In an interview with The Guardian, Martin recalled her mother’s reaction to her marriage to her wife, Lisa Holewyne, in 2017. “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,” Martin told the outlet. “I said, ‘I lived 20 years making you happy. I’m going to live the next 20 years making me happy.’”

Following her 2010 separation from her former husband, Christy has described their 25-year age-gap marriage as one filled with domestic abuse. “Jim told me constantly, ‘If you leave me, whether it be for a man or woman, I’m going to kill you. And I’m going to tell the world that you’re gay,’” she told The Guardian in 2022 while promoting her memoir. “So I was basically blackmailed into staying.”

The couple first met when Christy was starting her career as a boxer. Though Jim didn’t necessarily believe that women belonged in the ring, Christy believes he agreed to coach her because he “saw dollar signs.” Jim’s presence soon turned from coach to lover, and they were married within a year. Christy, however, told CBS News that she felt it was “more business partnership than love story” and saw the marriage as a way to please her parents, who had still not accepted her sexuality.

According to Christy, Jim got her addicted to cocaine and dipped into her earnings to fund his lifestyle. “Once he started giving [cocaine] to me, I was never without it,” she told The Guardian. “And he would control it. He would withhold it. He’d say, ‘OK, this is what you have to do if you want another line.’”

Martin training in the ring in 1995.

Eventually, the mental abuse turned physical when Jim decided to make good on his threat to kill her. On Nov. 23, 2010, Christy told Jim she was leaving him, and he responded by stabbing her three times and shooting her in an attack that almost left her dead. Her lung was punctured, her leg was mangled, and every time she tried to get up, “blood would squirt out of the stab holes,” she recounted to The Guardian. Though she admits to not being very religious, she thanks God for getting her out of that house.

As depicted in Christy, she somehow mustered the strength to grab the car keys and drive herself to the hospital. But, just as in the movie, she accidentally grabbed Jim’s keys instead of her own, leaving her to wander into the street and hope for a stranger to stop and help her. She was in luck: after one car passed without stopping, a Good Samaritan named Rick Cole picked her up and took her to the hospital. Martin calls him her “angel” and says she still sends him a message every year on November 23.

As briefly mentioned in the film’s epilogue, Jim was found guilty of attempted second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He died in 2024 while serving his sentence.

Martin began boxing in 1987—the first year women were allowed to professionally step into the ring—and made her pro debut at age 21. Her nickname referenced her father’s profession in her native West Virginia.

Her career took off in the early ’90s, and in 1993 she became the first woman to sign with Don King, the renowned International Hall of Fame promoter, which catapulted her to international fame. She boxed until the gruesome attack on her life, and after recovering, she returned to the ring in 2011 before retiring. She was part of the inaugural class of the International Women’s Boxing Hall of Fame in 2014.

Despite her decorated career, Christy depicts some of the darker moments of her life as well. Michôd and Foulkes told TIME that they worked to gain Martin’s trust to show untold parts of her story—including the uncomfortable scenes of Christy sparring with men in hotel rooms. “There were kind of sexual undertones to that,” Foulkes admitted. The film also lightly portrays her cocaine addiction, which was encouraged and fueled by Jim.

Lisa Holewyne and Christy Martin (and their dog, Champ).

Jim was always paranoid that Christy would leave him for her high school sweetheart Sherry Lusk, whom she had reconnected with near the end of her marriage. While that relationship was the catalyst for her separation from Jim, Christy ultimately married someone who intimately understood her life as a professional boxer: her longtime rival, Lisa Holewyne.

The couple first met as opponents in 2001 and began talking in earnest after Martin’s marriage dissolved. “A few months after everything happened—and the trial with Jim—[Lisa] started to call and check on me,” Martin told The Guardian. “And then she came to one of my fights that I was promoting in Charlotte, and we’ve been together since.”

Martin is now the CEO of Christy Martin Promotions, which organizes boxing matchups throughout the Southeast, including in North Carolina and Florida.