2014 will be remembered as the year where domestic violence took center stage in mainstream sports. Various athletes, and the sporting conglomerates that they work for, would be faced with a slew of media criticism as they were pressured to deal with issues that were no longer allowed to be kept under the rug, as would have been the case just a decade ago.
Arguably the most resounding of these harrowing incidents was what adult film star Christy Mack was forced to endure at the hands of her longtime boyfriend, former UFC and Bellator fighter Jon Koppenhaver aka War Machine.
Following their break up in May 2014, War Machine showed up at her house at 2am on a Friday in August, where he found her sitting with a friend in the house. He proceeded to beat her friend and then proceeded to assault her in horrific fashion. Although Mack initially released a detailed and harrowing statement following the incident, ESPN’s Jane McManus was able to recreate the entire scenario in her powerful piece.
As she laid on her bathroom floor, Mack says that Koppenhaver allegedly told her, “That is my p—-y, and I’m going to take it back now.” At some point, Mack says, Koppenhaver grabbed a knife and threatened her with it. She says she ended up naked and in the shower, though she’s not sure whether he undressed her or ordered her to take her clothes off. She told police that Koppenhaver tried to rape her, and prosecutors have charged him with sexual assault. In her testimony, Mack escaped the house only when Koppenhaver left the bedroom and entered the kitchen. She heard the clanging of metal and believes he went looking for another knife.
Mack says she ran, naked, to a neighbor’s house, climbed the fence and begged to let her in. The neighbors didn’t open the door, but they let her hide behind a wall outside as they called the police.
Watch Ariel Helwani interview Christy Mack and War Machine in 2013:
Mack took to twitter to update her fans on the harrowing details of her multiple procedures and trips to the dentist and hospital over the past few weeks. She also provided a time-lapse of her face over that time period to add to the already-disturbing details.
As an update: pic.twitter.com/6uuAM4ES9D
— Christy Mack (@ChristyMack) September 14, 2014
“Just feeling my face, I knew it wasn’t right,” she told ESPN. “So when I’d look in the mirror, it’s not me — that person wasn’t me. It’s so hard to go every day without being you anymore.”
The adult film actress later found herself unnecessarily defending her actions on twitter after the initial pictures of her were posted.
“It wasn’t OK for people to say I got what I deserved when they had no idea what my struggle was,” Mack says now. “My people told me afterward that I shouldn’t have (put out the photos and her statement). But I needed to write that.”
Koppenhaver is currently on trial facing 36 separate charges for his disturbing assault of Mack, including attempted murder and sexual assault. Locked away in solitary confinement, his attorney declined to provide a comment from Koppenhaver for the ESPN article, but he remained in the public eye. During the initial hearing, he angered the judge when he laughed as Mack described their relationship and the incident. He later attempted to hang himself, but put out a statement saying he “bitched out too soon” and went on to quote Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.
He is yet to show any signs of remorse for his traumatic displays of violence.
“It hurt so much to know he was so separated from the situation. He still hasn’t taken responsibility to this day,” Mack says. “He blames his childhood, he blames me, he blames fighting. He claims he found God now — he’s looking for any kind of way not to take responsibility for what happened.”