Christy Salters Martin outshone Mike Tyson, survived a cocaine addiction and being shot and stabbed by her ex-husband to inspire a generation like Muhammad Ali’s daughter

Despite some disparaging comments from Bob Arum, women’s boxing is currently in the midst of a boom.

Claressa Shields made her UK debut live on talkSPORT before a grudge match with Savannah Marshall, while Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano have dates with destiny at Madison Square Garden.

Arum insisted fans ‘don’t pay attention’ to women fighting, yet one woman was able to blaze a trail and ensure all eyes were on her.

Before Shields, Taylor or Serrano, Christy Salters Martin was paving the way for female fighters – becoming a world champion, the first female boxer to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated, getting inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame and inspiring Laila Ali to follow her father, Muhammad, into the squared circle.

Martin even stole the spotlight away from a prime Mike Tyson on his undercard in 1996 against Deidre Gogarty, gripping fans in a fight which Sports Illustrated said had ‘more action and better boxing’ than Tyson’s fight with Frank Bruno.

Yet her life away from the sport was gripped with fear and tragedy, permeating from the man who was supposed to care for and protect her.

Christy was stabbed multiple times and shot by ex-husband Jim Martin whilst sitting on their bed at their Florida home in Apopka on a Tuesday evening in 2010.

Police reports suggest she was stabbed four times before a fifth puncture ripped into her left breast. As she tried to fight her assailant, the nine-inch Buck knife sliced her calf muscle and detached it from the bone.

The pair wrestled on the floor, before the boxer cried out: ‘Mother f*****, you cannot kill me.’ At this point, Martin stood up and shot his wife of 20 years from three inches away in the heart, with the pink pistol she recognised as her own.

After 30 minutes and with Martin assuming his wife is slowly dying, Christy dragged her lacerated body out of the house and into the road outside, where she accosted a stranger and was taken to the Emergency Room. Jim Martin realised what had happened, running out into the street wearing just his underwear and watched the car flee down the street.

Martin was born and raised in the coal mining town of Itmann in West Virginia and fought for the first time at a ToughMan Contest – a backyard brawling venture which predated mixed martial arts.

After a second fight and a first knockout, she ended up at a boxing gym in Bristol, West Virginia and met the man who eventually taught her the ropes of the sport, end up becoming her husband and who would also try to savagely murder her.

Jim Martin initially was reluctant to train her, but quickly realised she had natural talent and tremendous knockout power and sensed an opportunity.

"He would tell me, 'I'm going to make you the best woman fighter ever and make myself lots of money,'" Martin told ESPN. "It was all about what I could do for him."

Her success inside the ring led to a partnership with Don King and the eventual fight with Gogarty in Las Vegas which would help her transcend sport completely.

Martin had her nose split in the third round, but battled through pain on the pay-per-view and her voicemail flooded with offers when she returned to her hotel room after the victory.

Despite appearances on talk shows and sponsorship deals rolling in, her relationship with Jim Martin deteriorated as he became more vindictive – recording her in compromising positions and situations, reading her emails and texts and belittling her intellect an appearance.

In the years after the sickening attack, Martin suffered with PTSD and did not enjoy going into the shower for fear of being watched and even jumped in fear when her wife, Lisa Holewyne, pulled out a knife to chop food.

The duo married in 2017, but actually fought in 2001 on the undercard of Lennox Lewis’ rematch with Hasim Rahman at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

"She boxed circles around me," Holewyne told ESPN. "It was aggravating.

“At the weigh-in, when I got off the scale, I said, 'Good luck, Martin,' and she said, 'Good luck getting knocked the f*** out.'

“Those were our first words to each other."

During Jim Martin’s trial, Christy took the stand for three hours and revealed the most intimate details of her life in an attempt to condemn the man who had controlled her, before trying to destroy her.

Despite having not seen her attacker since that fateful day in 2010, Martin stepped down from the stand and passed Jim in the courtroom.

Standing over him with quiet resolve and a defiance, Martin whispered, ‘I hope you rot in hell, you mother f*****.’

The jury took five hours to find James Martin guilty of attempted second-degree murder, with the judge sentencing him to 25 years in prison.

Christy Salter Martin now promotes fighters after trying, yet just failing, to reach 50 career wins before retiring in 2012. Given how she has triumphed consistently in the face of adversity already, you would not bet against her becoming a powerhouse in the world of boxing once again.

“The promoter is more fitting for me, but it’s tough,” she told the World Boxing Super Series. “It’s tough work. It’s much harder to be the promoter than to be the fighter. I’m at the bottom. I’m a four-six-round promoter. I haven’t made it to the championship level yet so I do a lot of the work myself.

“Goes from arranging the hotel room to the travel to the insurance, to help match most of the fights. My hands are in all of it. I have to make the little decisions as well.

“But with that being said I’m going to fight the fight and trying to get to the higher ranks of the promoters. But I’m also putting a lot of time with Christy’s Champs – my domestic violence non-profit. Speaking at different events, going around the country just trying to raise awareness.

“I think it is always important for people to understand it’s not just about the bruises, it’s about the mental and emotional beat down and the control that these victimizers put us under.

“These abusers just want to keep on putting us down further and further – they want to break your spirit. And that’s what happened to me; Jim broke my spirit.

“I believe that God left me here for that fight. To help other people to find some strength through my stories so they don’t have to go down that road as far as I did.”