The contest was held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Paradise, Nevada, on the Las Vegas Strip, as part of the undercard of a pay-per-view championship match between Mike Tyson and Frank Bruno with 1.1 million buys.
[4] The fight was won by Martin, who was bleeding profusely, in a six-round unanimous decision, and led to her being the first female boxer featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
[5] Christy Renea Martin (née Salters) was born on June 12, 1968, in Mullens, West Virginia,[6] the daughter and granddaughter of coal miners.
[7] As a freshman basketball player at Concord College in 1987, Martin began boxing in amateur contests on a dare, easily taking home the $1,000 prize.
[3] On January 29, 1994, she appeared on the undercard of a fight between Julio César Chávez and Frankie Randall at the MGM Grand Hotel, knocking out Susie "Sluggin'" Melton 40 seconds into their first round.
[3] Impressed with her potential, Sower convinced Beau Willford, an American former heavyweight boxer who used to practice fighting with Muhammad Ali, to train her at his gym in Lafayette, Louisiana.
[3][14] Gogarty had a second try for the WIBF world lightweight title on April 20, 1995, at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, facing Laura Serrano of Mexico, who had drawn against Christy Martin in her own US debut.
[20][3] Despite the bloody nose, Martin was still the aggressor, unleashing massive combinations in the fourth round, while Gogarty continued to fight back and kept her feet moving.
[3] The sixth and final round continued similarly, with Martin throwing lefts and rights up until the bell, as the crowd cheered, and the on-air announcer praised both boxers' "brilliant" heart.
[3] In the end, Gogarty's come-from-behind effort was not enough, as Martin was deemed the winner by the judges' unanimous decision, with a comfortable lead in points based on her shot rate, which was consistently on-target with both hands, and range.
[3][2][17] Journalist Tom Humphries wrote, "The mixture of ferocity and serious boxing skills left the most chauvinistic ticket holders gape mouthed...Aside from the main event, Tyson and Bruno, this was the match which most thoroughly and genuinely engaged the passions of the crowd.
[17] The image of Christy Martin, flushed with exertion but triumphant,[3] even as "she bled like a stuck pig" in the words of her trainer-husband,[17] captured the attention of the media and won her fans worldwide.
[5] In 2021, Martin was featured in the Netflix documentary Untold: Deal With the Devil,[25] and her autobiography, Fighting for Survival: My Journey Through Boxing Fame, Abuse, Murder and Resurrection, was released on June 22, 2022.
[26][27] Although Tyson and Bruno split a purse worth $36 million, the women who boxed on the undercard took home considerably less: Christy Martin was paid $15,000, while Deirdre Gogarty ended up with only $3,000.
[13] On March 2, 1997, Gogarty finally won the WIBF featherweight championship on her third try for a title after defeating Bonnie Canino in New Orleans, becoming Ireland's first female world boxing champion.