For Sydney Sweeney, Playing Christy Martin Was More Than Just a Movie Role. It Was a Responsibility.

Christy Salters Martin is not enjoying this press tour. 

There are moments of joy, of course: She likes seeing the country, although she did a lot of that as the most famous female boxer of her generation. She chuckles as her Pomeranian, Champ, earns his executive platinum status on American Airlines and appreciates it not at all. She loves watching rooms react to Sydney Sweeney, in part because after so long in the spotlight, Salters Martin, 57, now gets to observe from the shadows. But honestly, after something like two weeks in half a dozen cities—she’s lost count—what she wants to do more than anything is go home. Not to Apopka, Fla., where she and her wife, fellow former boxer Lisa Holewyne, live a five-minute drive from where Salters Martin’s then husband tried to kill her. She wants to go back to rural West Virginia, where she grew up, and where all this started.