Christy Mack Opens Up About Brutal Attack By Ex-Boyfriend War Machine
By now, everyone has heard the story of the brutal assault on adult film star Christy Mack by her former boyfriend MMA fighter War Machine, AKA Jon Koppenhaver, that left her mutilated and nearly dead. If you haven’t, on August 8, 2014, War Machine broke into her Las Vegas home and flew into a rage after catching her hanging out with friend, Corey Thomas. The attack on Mack left her hospitalized with 18 broken bones, missing teeth, a ruptured liver, deep bruises throughout her body, and a broken nose.
Koppenhaver also allegedly cut off her trademark black mohawk with a dull knife during the attack.
For the first time since the attack, Christy Mack spoke out about it in an interview with ESPN yesterday, opening up about herself, her healing, and the surgeries she needed in order to fix the damage that had been done. Mack tells ESPN writer Jane McManus that although she has physically healed, her face is so changed from all the surgeries that sometimes, she doesn’t even recognize herself.
“I didn’t look in the mirror for weeks. Just feeling my face, I knew it wasn’t right, 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.”
In order to fix the damage, Mack had to have multiple bones reset, which left her with small, but noticeable changes in her appearance. Christy now needs to wear glasses due to the way the muscles around her eyes healed; so many of Mack’s teeth were broken, her mouth is now a different shape — uneven veneers allow her to eat normally.
Christy Mack admitted that this wasn’t the first time War Machine had been abusive, “he became abusive about four to five months in,” she said, “but by that time I was totally in love with him.” Christy wants everyone to know, though, that just because she stayed after the first time, or just because she was a porn star, or just because he was an MMA fighter, or any other of the myriad of reasons people like to throw out there, doesn’t mean she deserved it, or was “asking for it”, as is the common sentiment in cases of victim blaming. “It wasn’t OK for people to say I got what I deserved when they had no idea what my struggle was,” Mack says in regards to the responses she got after posting pictures of the attack to her personal Twitter account.
“I’m not going to sit around in my hospital bed and have people say that I did something wrong. This is what happened, so I decided to put it out there. I did nothing wrong — it wasn’t like I said, ‘Please hit me again,'”
War Machine, who has pleaded not guilty to 32 felony charges, including the attempted murder of Christy Mack, awaits his trial — which is set to begin in the fall — from solitary confinement, after having tried to commit suicide on October 14. If found guilty of all 32 charges, he could face life in prison. He still maintains he is innocent of the attack on Christy Mack, though one would think if he was in fact innocent, he would feel some sort of empathy for a woman he was supposed to love, rather than laugh during her emotional testimony.
