October is Domestic Violence Awareness month and no book in print today will make you more aware of this problem than ”Fighting For Survival: My Journey Through Boxing Fame, Abuse, Murder and Resurrection” (Rowman & Littlefield) by former world champion Christy Martin, who was abused for more than 20 years by her trainer/husband before he finally left her for dead on the bathroom floor of their home with multiple stab wounds and a bullet in her chest. Only her unbreakable will to survive allowed her to get off the floor, save her life and go on to resume her boxing career and today work tirelessly as an advocate for domestic violence awareness through her foundation, Christy’s Champs, and public speaking events around the country.
Universally regarded as the trailblazer of female combat sports for having created a place for women inside the ring thirty years ago, “Fighting For Survival” goes way beyond the 49 victories she earned inside the ring. It also deals with the victories she earned outside the ring, in fights for which no amount of gym training can prepare you. The book's first chapter opens with Christy's brutal retelling of being left for dead on the floor of the bedroom she shared with her then-husband and trainer, after he had stabbed her multiple times with a buck knife and shot her from point blank range with her own 9mm pistol, the culmination of an abusive marriage that had lasted for nearly 20 years.
Fighting For Survival is a brave and clear-eyed view of a career that inspired female fighters across the globe. But it is more than that. It is her story of survival and perseverance. Christy grew up in a small West Virginia coal mining town, unable to express her true sexual identity for fear of rejection by her family and her community. While earning millions of dollars inside the ring, she had to overcome drug addiction, survive both child abuse at the age of six at the hands of a 15-year-old cousin and domestic abuse (her ex-husband and trainer/manager Jim Martin is serving a 25-year sentence in a Florida prison for second-degree attempted murder and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon on Christy). Her trials did not stop there. She also faced recovery from a stroke that struck her while on the operating table to repair a hand broken during a boxing match. Christy Martin survived it all and came back fighting, fighting for herself and for every person who has faced the kinds of emotional and physical abuse she faced while hiding it all from a world that viewed her as the greatest female fighter in boxing history.
Christy is now an advocate for domestic abuse victims as well as a boxing promoter. She remains the only female fighter to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated (April 15, 1996). She was also the first woman to fight on premium cable television, the first to fight on pay-per-view, the first to fight in Madison Square Garden, the first and only woman to sign to fight for a million-dollar purse and the first to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. That latter honor came three weeks before the publication of “Fighting For Survival."
“I made it and I want to help others in similar situations," Martin says when asked the purpose of writing her memoir, which she wrote with IBHOF writer Ron Borges. “You don't have to be a boxer to be a fighter. If you want to take control of your life you just have to put in the work. Above all, you must realize you don't have to suffer in silence.
"Despite all the terrors I faced and fears me and an estimated 42 million other women in America have known from domestic violence, I choose never to see myself as a victim. I am a survivor. My hope is by telling my story other women will find the courage and the way to become survivors too.”
"Fighting For Survival" is available at many major book retailers in the U.S. and the U.K., including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Amazon UK.
