Christy

This bio-pic, about America’s first and greatest female boxer, is a punch in the gut.

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We follow Christy Martin from when she was in high school, having a relationship with a fellow teammate on the basketball team, to when she was a fledgling boxer having to win over a misogynistic dude to get him to train her; from when she'd become a boxing sensation, opening for a Tyson fight, to when she finally got out from underneath her abusive marriage.

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Sydney Sweeney, who has a background in wrestling, gives a masterful performance. After reading the script, she pleaded with producers to be given the role. Not only did she want to tell Christy’s story, she also wanted to embody a character the way this role required. She gained 35 pounds, trained in the ring for 4 months, and insisted that the boxing scenes be real, not acted. In fact, Ms. Sweeney learned the punch sequences, hit for hit, that Christy used in every fight we see recreated for this film. The punches are real, the blood that flows isn’t makeup.

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This must-see bio-pic is a roller coaster ride full of tension. Christy's ups are muddied by the behaviors of her husband, and her downs are lightened by people who show up to help when they’re really needed.

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Some people may wonder: why didn’t she just leave the guy? The situation wasn’t straight-forward and people are complicated.

Christy Martin had to deal with her own conditioning which made her fearful of the reaction of the general public, a mother who never accepted Christy for who she is, the truth that the coaching was helping her to win fights and get increasingly better deals, and the deep need to escape the small town life she was born into.

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Thankfully, because she didn’t give up in a clutch moment (when I just would have laid down and died) Christy triumphed in the end. She put in the work to keep going, to get healthy, to shift from boxer to boxing analyst, public speaker and Hall of Famer, while her abusive ex-husband went to prison for 25 years which, because of his age, was a life sentence.

Netflix released a documentary in 2021 on Christy and their life together called Untold: Deal with the Devil which I like to assume that he saw before he died in 2024.

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