Frankly, we will admit that a TV program about sports is not something that usually gets a second look from the Queerguru Editorial team. However, Netflix’s new series of standalone documentaries called UNTOLD had one particular episode that caught our attention.
Netflix promotes the series as taking a hard-hitting look at sports stories, and UNTOLD: Deal With The Devil certainly does that and so much more. Its the rather harrowing story of lesbian boxer CHRISTY MARTIN who in the 1990’s became of the first successful female boxers in this country. However, her ‘fights’ were not just restricted to the ring, in a sport fuelled by aggressive machismo, she married her (male) trainer to avoid accepting her true sexuality. The violence in her personal life made her it all seem like one long impossible battle.
Reflecting her own tough childhood, when Martin started to box who was billed as ‘the coal miners daughter” and she had no hesitation in taking in male boxers. In the league of things, even though women’s boxing bouts were just as brutal and bloody as the mens, they were paid peanuts to fight.
Martin’s luck was about to change when she caught the eye of boxing’s biggest promotor (the very creepy) Don King. He could see potential big dollar signs in the ‘novelty’ of women fighting, and so he put Martin on the bill at the MGM Grand. Even being on the same ticket as a Mke Tyson fight one night.
Soon she was tabloid news, and being feted as a guest on all the last night chat shows and being featured on the front cover of magazines. Whilst Martin reveled in this unexpected stardom, it really irked other women boxers out of the limelight who were still been pummeled to near-death for a pittance. It didn’t help either that Martin insisted in very loudly trash mouthing all of her competitors.
This all makes for very tough viewing, especially the stomach-churning close-ups in the ring, where it is impossible to feel the sympathy we probably should have. However, it was the fight with her sexuality and the constant emotional and physical abuse that Martin suffered from her husband who was well aware of her preferences, that hits home hardest
Martin may not come over as a very warm and naturally likable person in this profile by the director Laura Brownson, but we are nevertheless relieved that the story has a very happy ending.
Telling this tale reminds us yet once again that in areas such as sport the imbalance of power between the sexes has hardly moved at all in the past decades. And it makes us questions the high cost of the personal sacrifices that the Christy Martins of the world make just to keep men amused.
Available to view now on https://www.netflix.com/title/81026437