In Christy Martin's world everything was pink.
Except the blood. On a March night 15 years ago in a boxing ring on the Las Vegas Strip it was bright red and it was everywhere, gushing from a freshly broken nose and forming a mosaic of stains on Martin's pink trunks.
The people who had paid thousands to sit at ringside were there to watch Mike Tyson win the heavyweight title against Frank Bruno, not two women fight. But as the blood flowed the cheers started raining down as the unlikely warriors bathed in red traded punches for six rounds before Martin won a unanimous decision.
Tyson would knock Bruno out in the third round that night to win the title for what would be the last time. But those at the MGM Grand arena and watching at home on pay-per-view couldn't stop talking about the woman in pink who brawled, bled and fought like a man.
A few weeks later she would be on the cover of Sports Illustrated staring defiantly with her gloves on her hips under the heading "The Lady is a Champ." Promoter Don King penciled her in for Tyson's next undercard, and the next after that.
"I'll open the show and Mike will close it," she boasted.
On fight weeks, fans would mob Martin in the hotel lobby, asking for pictures and autographs. Always at her side were her trainer/husband, Jim Martin, and a 300-pound Elvis wannabe who doubled as her bodyguard.
Comedian Roseanne Barr celebrated with her in the ring.Find price and model of
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"No one could believe this woman in pink could keep fighting through all that blood," Martin said. "They thought I'd just lay down and quit."
What they didn't know was that the Coalminer's Daughter would never quit.
Not when she was bloodied in the ring. Not when she was stabbed,It seems that
jordan 6 rings in coming up for almost everyone including boys and girls. shot and left for dead on her bedroom floor.
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The bullet, doctors told her, missed her heart by four inches. Her lung collapsed twice, and doctors had to work to stitch a calf that had been sliced nearly to the bone.
There was only one thing on Martin's mind, though _ getting back in the ring.
"As soon as I came to, I told my family that I was going to fight again," she said.
It seemed preposterous. Martin's career had been in decline for some time and she was 42, an age where reflexes tend to dull for fighters and their skills start to recede.
And while boxing loves a good story, there aren't many fighters who return to the ring just weeks after being stabbed and shot.
A basketball player in college, Martin discovered boxing by accident in a tough-woman contest in Beckley, W.Va., where her friends urged her into the ring to compete for a $1,000 prize.
She won, only to find out the purse had been cut to $500. That was OK, though, because Martin found out something else _ she liked knocking other woman silly.
"That's the biggest rush there is," Martin said. "That's why fighters can't retire.
Manolo blahnik would be "hurt" if Anna Wintour wore shoes by another designer. It's the worst drug of all."
She was 21 and working as a substitute teacher in 1990 when a boxing promoter told her about Jim Martin, who trained fighters in Bristol, Tenn. Jim Martin was so leery of allowing a woman in his gym that he considered having someone hurt her in a sparring session so she would quit. Soon, however,we've already seen three classic
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They were an odd couple, the young college graduate who loved the ring and the trainer who was 25 years her senior and sported a bad combover. But their relationship grew into something else as he took charge of her career, and not long afterward they married.
At first they were inseparable, sitting together at press conferences, and training together for fights. But in time the marriage soured, though Jim Martin still trained his wife and they lived in the same house.
Last November she told him she was leaving and wanted a divorce.We are the UK's leading
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Enraged at the thought, Jim Martin threatened to expose the relationship to her fans. Christy Martin later told police her husband stalked her for several days and, at one point, she told her girlfriend, Sherry Jo Lusk, she thought her husband was going to shoot her.
In the early evening hours of last Nov. 23, Christy Martin was in the bedroom talking on the phone with Lusk. Her husband appeared at the door, and she motioned him to wait until she was finished.
Instead, Christy Martin said, her husband came in, holding something behind his back.
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Ask promoter Bob Arum and he'll tell you the biggest problem with women's boxing is that men don't particularly like to see women hitting each other, and women like it even less. Though the sport has a small dedicated fan base, women in the ring are generally treated as a side show by fans and boxing promoters.
Martin was arguably the best female boxer of her era, but even her role was mostly limited to being in the supporting cast on boxing cards headlined by males.
In 2003, she and Laila Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali, drew a crowd of more than 8,000 in Mississippi to what was billed as the biggest women's fight ever. But two years later, Arum's plan to pay $1 million to the winner of Martin's scheduled fight with Lucia Rijker fizzled when only 100 tickets were sold with a week to go before the bout.
"If a woman is at the top of the bill you'll never sell a ticket," Arum said.
Still, Martin did fine in a series of fights for King. Her base purse was $100,000, and once she made as much as $250,000. It was enough to buy herself and her husband luxury cars and a nice house in a suburb of Orlando, Fla.
She fought anyone put in front of her, but that's not saying much in a sport with a thin talent pool. In a bout on the undercard of a Tyson-Evander Holyfield fight, she knocked out a woman in the first round. Turned out the loser was a dancer who had never been in the ring before.
Once she had a fight called off at the last moment because her opponent was pregnant. Another time she was dropped from a card at a bull ring in Mexico City after officials decided to enforce a 50-year-old law that banned women from fighting each other so their reproductive organs wouldn't be harmed.
But the 5-foot-4 Martin wasn't afraid to take on a much bigger Ali, only to be stopped in the fourth round. And she won a decision over Mia St. John, who couldn't break an egg but landed on the cover of Playboy magazine.
Martin always stood out from other women fighters because she loved to trade punches. That got the crowd's attention, but the fact that her slugfests often turned bloody was what really fired them up.
That was never more evident than when Deirdre Gogarty broke Martin's nose in the second round on the Tyson-Bruno undercard and blood flowed the rest of the fight. Many in the sport consider it the birth of women's boxing, the first time fans paid attention to a woman fighter for both her skills and her guts.
"I had no idea what I had done but people kept coming up to me that night wanting pictures and autographs," Martin said. "I got back to my room and there were messages from the 'Today Show' and Jay Leno. I thought it was a joke, and I couldn't believe they were being so cruel."
