Christy Mack looks at her face up sometimes -- the new ane -- and tries to make up one's mind if she likes information technology better than her onetime i. There are differences.

Her bright eyes used to be slightly more expressive. But the fashion her muscles healed after the attack, she now needs glasses. "It'south OK," she says. "They're cute."

Her mouth has a dissimilar shape after so many teeth were cleaved. She has veneers, but they are uneven, a stopgap measure out so she tin swallow normally. She won't smile for photos until she gets them stock-still again.

"I didn't look in the mirror for weeks," Mack says.

She examines her face like information technology'south not quite her own. Imagine that -- the about basic recognition, and it's gone.

"Just feeling my face up, I knew it wasn't right," she says. "So when I'd look in the mirror, it'south not me -- that person wasn't me. It's so hard to go every day without beingness you anymore."

Yet, after all the cleaved bones, a ruptured liver and a thigh bruise so deep that she couldn't walk for a week, Mack is back to being unmistakably herself in a crew neck blue sweater and jeans. Her subversive sense of sense of humour is fully intact.

It's a warm twenty-four hour period on the cusp of springtime, when living in Las Vegas feels like cheating the misery of winters growing up in a minor Midwestern boondocks like Edinburgh, Indiana. Mack lets her pit bulls, Cleopitra and Pitrick Swayzee -- see what she did in that location? -- into the warm desert sunshine of the courtyard.

Despite her eventual glory, Mack, 23, had a deceptively conventional childhood. She was a cheerleader through her senior year in high schoolhouse. She worked at the Nike store at the local mall. Of class she tin't say for sure, but Mack thinks she may accept been the final person in her high school to lose her virginity.

She married her boyfriend at 18 and took care of their dogs while her hubby worked at a car dealership. And if that were where the story ended, Mack'due south life would accept been completely, boringly normal. But she felt restless, unsettled. So when she was approached most posing nude, she traded the Midwest and marriage for What'southward Behind Door No. 3, and went to Miami with her optics open.

With her unique looks -- a curvy frame featuring finely designed tattoos, a long black mohawk and an analogousness for her pet snakes -- she rocketed to the top of the adult film industry. And there were rewards and a kind of underground fame that she enjoyed.

But she never considered that part of her adventure would include starring in just most the nigh horrific domestic violence case yous'll ever hear virtually, allegedly at the hands of a famous athlete.

***

Sitting on a white leather couch in her gated home a few miles off the Las Vegas Strip, Mack has decided that, new face or one-time, she feels skilful once again. And she can even express mirth about the stuff that nevertheless feels weird.

"Found out the faux parts of my teeth glow in the tanning bed. And so that's fun, I guess. I'chiliad glad that doesn't happen with my boobs ..." she tweeted in Dec.

Until the early morning time hours of Aug. viii, 2014, the night Las Vegas prosecutors allege she was nearly beaten to death past former UFC fighter Jon "War Machine" Koppenhaver, Mack'southward dazzler was still her calling card, and modeling was her task.

When Christine Mackinday started her career, the petite 5-foot-1 insubordinate considered many different hairstyles before finally settling on a long black mohawk. It gave her a renegade look that was in stylized defiance to all the interchangeable blondes in the adult manufacture. She used her hair to indicate her membership in some other yet undiscovered tribe and attracted an ardent fan base as she transitioned from nude photos to adult videos.

By the fourth dimension she met Koppenhaver in the spring of 2013, she was an established porn star. As Military -- Koppenhaver had his name legally changed in 2008 -- he pingponged from the UFC to several other MMA organizations, and he had been dabbling in porn himself. He had served jail time already afterwards multiple arrests, most of which involved fighting at confined. She didn't know about those bug until she was already in love.

They'd met on a photo shoot. Mack didn't feel well (it was pneumonia), and he offered to come to her hotel and take care of her. She told him they would not be having sex, and he wanted to hang out with her anyway. They ate pizza and talked; Mack felt taken care of. "It was an astonishing connection," Mack says. "I fell in love really quick."

Koppenhaver didn't approve of her work, but for a year they were a couple, even living together on two separate occasions at her Las Vegas dwelling house. When Armed services fought on an MMA carte, she was the notoriously cute porn star who was muzzle-side at all of his fights. She says the violence began to carry over from the cage to home life, though.

"He became abusive about four to five months in, but past that time I was totally in dearest with him," Mack says. "And then, and so in love. The first time I thought, 'Oh it'll never happen again.' The day after, he stayed dwelling from training and coddled me. Later every fourth dimension he would hitting me, those were the best days of our relationship."

She stopped doing movies at his request, sticking to photos and appearances. Simply of course, as and so many domestic violence victims detail, that didn't really prepare anything. A relationship that began with tenderness turned into something close to the exact opposite.

The relationship ended, started again and concluded again, but Mack still felt that pull toward Koppenhaver. They stayed in touch, and on Aug. 8, 2014, prosecutors say he used an old cardinal to get into her habitation, where she and a male friend, Corey Thomas, were sleeping the night before a tattoo convention.

What happened side by side, the prosecution contends, morphed from a jealous flare-up into a horrific display of violence. In courtroom documents outlining 36 dissimilar charges against Koppenhaver, including attempted murder, the vehement details are hard to read. (Please note that much of what you're virtually to read came from Mack, Thomas, the police force report and the prosecution. Koppenhaver'due south attorney, Brandon Sua, declined an interview asking for his customer, who is in solitary solitude and unavailable to speak. Comments from Sua are included where relevant.)

Mack and Thomas were woken when Koppenhaver allegedly walked into the bedroom, turned on the calorie-free and began striking Thomas with his fists. In his testimony, Thomas said he'd been punched repeatedly and bit in the face up by Koppenhaver earlier being placed in a chokehold. After near x minutes, Mack testified, Koppenhaver told him to leave the house and to not study the incident to the police. Thomas left the business firm, and he did not telephone call the police.

Koppenhaver then began striking Mack, according to the prosecution. He punched her multiple times, causing her to lose consciousness at to the lowest degree once, and kicked her in the side of her body.

Equally she laid on her bath 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 upwards naked and in the shower, though she'south non sure whether he undressed her or ordered her to accept her dress off. She told constabulary that Koppenhaver tried to rape her, and prosecutors have charged him with sexual attack. In her testimony, Mack escaped the business firm only when Koppenhaver left the bedroom and entered the kitchen. She heard the clanging of metallic and believes he went looking for another knife.

Mack says she ran, naked, to a neighbor'due south house, climbed the argue and begged to permit her in. The neighbors didn't open the door, simply they allow her hide backside a wall outside every bit they chosen the law.

The chirapsia left her unable to walk for a week because of the injuries to her thigh. Her liver had been ruptured from punches and kicks to her trunk -- the liver injury was so bad that doctors opted to not operate on her face considering they worried she couldn't handle being put under anesthesia. She had xviii broken basic, a broken olfactory organ, multiple missing and cleaved teeth, and a fractured rib.

Just perhaps nothing hurt like her recollection of what Koppenhaver did to her identity. At some point that night, Mack says he took the dull bract of the knife he was holding and meticulously began sawing her hair.

When he was washed, Mack's trademark mohawk laid on the floor in a pile.

***

Afterwards neighbors called police force, the story blew upward. As government launched a manhunt for Koppenhaver, Mack posted stunning images of her injuries on Twitter, sparking a viral reaction. Domestic dog the Bounty Hunter even announced he would be joining the search for Koppenhaver.

All sorts of rumors and false reports began to pop upwardly near what happened that night. Mack saw comments on social media speculating that she wasn't really hurt, or that she had hurt Koppenhaver first. It was reminiscent of the way that many people saw the initial Ray Rice news in February 2014 and shrugged their shoulders with some version of, "You never know what happens between a husband and wife."

Information technology's a make of victim-blaming that ofttimes happens in domestic violence cases, but there besides seemed to exist an added undercurrent of derision for Mack considering of her profession.

She's just a porn star.

Whore.

She probably likes it rough.

Merely three days afterward, the narrative shifted dramatically when Mack tweeted graphic photos and her description of the incident. The photos were widely run past news outlets and blogs, with 40,000-plus retweets.

Pretty soon, the conversation began to shift. Something about seeing pictures that document domestic violence -- with Mack, with Rihanna, with Janay Rice -- dwarfs reading near information technology. The visceral, gruesome reality of Mack's injuries was inescapable, and it made people gulp and feel uncomfortable. Which is exactly what Mack wanted. "This is not acceptable," Mack says about her conclusion to fight rumor with evidence. "I'yard non going to sit around in my infirmary bed and take people say that I did something wrong. This is what happened, so I decided to put it out there."

Koppenhaver has maintained his innocence throughout, tweeting during the manhunt, "I'm not a bad guy. I went to surprise my gf, help her set upward her show and to give her an engagement ring and ended up fighting for my life."

He later added, "The cops will never requite me fair play, never believe me. Still deciding what to exercise simply at the cease of the twenty-four hour period it'south all just middle breaking."

Koppenhaver's then-employer, Bellator, immediately cut War Car from its roster. Bellator president Scott Coker says once he saw the pictures, his mind was made upwardly. He was new to the job, but wanted to send a message to everyone that alleged abuse like this wouldn't exist tolerated. "It was very articulate to me that there is no space in our league for somebody like that," Coker said.

Koppenhaver was already on probation for previous offenses -- the worst being a bar brawl in San Diego in which he roughed upward a bouncer and female bartender -- and Mack had alluded via social media that he had been abusive in the past earlier the alleged incident in Baronial. "It wasn't OK for people to say I got what I deserved when they had no idea what my struggle was," Mack says at present. "My people told me afterward that I shouldn't have (put out the photos and her statement). Just I needed to write that."

The doubts and detractors oasis't disappeared, of course. When she posted a photograph to her Instagram account in February, ane user replied, "Damn war motorcar should finished the job, bummer."

Here's the thing nigh Mack, though: She purposely immune herself to exist named by the court and in the media later on the incident, even though alleged sexual assail victims typically are shielded from identification. So she has no issue firing back at random Instagram and Twitter harassers, tweeting back, whether in her own defense or on behalf of other women who have been assaulted, hoping it changes a mind or 2. "I did nothing wrong -- it wasn't like I said, 'Please hitting me again,'" Mack says. "He was abusive, and people can't see that being the abuser is always going to be wrong. At that place'south zip that makes it OK. And people are looking for that 1 reason."

***

Even now, Erin Mackinday looks thin and tired, despite the cheeriness of her hot pink "Las Vegas" sweatshirt.

As hard as the recovery was for her daughter, Mackinday was about broken into pieces by what happened last summer. Early the morning of Aug. 8, she says she was awakened by a text from Koppenhaver saying she should check on her daughter. Mackinday was confused, so she chosen him. He told her enough to send her running to her machine and driving in a panic through the Las Vegas streets in the early forenoon dawn.

Mackinday stopped her machine in the middle of the street when she got to her daughter's business firm, barely aware that she was blocking traffic. Mackinday pushed through the layers of law enforcement and animal control pleading for an respond to the worst question a mom could ever wonder: "Is my daughter dead?"

Retelling the story, Mackinday breaks downward over again.

"No, your girl is in the hospital," she was told.

Knowing how Mack loves her pets, Mackinday quickly secured the pit bulls from animal control and locked the ferrets and snakes in a room. Then she left for the hospital.

In her room, Mack could only see a sliver out of 1 of her swollen eyes. But she recognized her mom's voice coming downward the hallway.

As her mother walked in, Mack pre-emptively pleaded with her, "Please don't cry."

Mackinday initially agreed, merely when she took her girl's hand and squeezed it, she fell to the floor and started sobbing. "That's when I knew it was bad," Mack says.

For about of the next week, her daughter was in the hospital as Koppenhaver evaded the regime. U.S. Marshals adult a atomic number 82 that he had fled to an Extended Stay America Hotel in California, near where he grew upwardly. (TMZ reported that when cops went to Koppenhaver's domicile in San Diego to retrieve two exotic snakes the fighter had there, they plant Domestic dog the Compensation Hunter on site.)

Mack'southward address had been publicly released in the police study, and then there was no haven to render to as reporters camped out nigh her home. Mackinday communicated a few times with Koppenhaver, yelling at him and begging him to turn himself in. She went from her daughter's bedside to her Las Vegas abode, which was surrounded by television cameras. She felt equal parts guilty and aroused for declining to proceed her baby safe.

"The rage eats you from the inside out because you lot are so helpless," Mackinday says now.

Mack's new house, the i she moved to later her dwelling address was published, suits her sense of style. There are graphic designs all over the walls -- machine chases and Bond girls.

Mack's bath has 3 behemothic lipstick tubes so vividly drawn that it looks like a single osculation would impart a Chanel-crimson rima oris. This is where Mack keeps her 12 wigs.

Long blue or curt blond, she spent weeks trying them out. She was looking for more than new hair, though -- she was searching for a new identity.

It took eight months and trying on dozens of wigs, but Mack finally feels similar she has plant herself again. In January, Mack got sick of her hair as it grew out. Her solution: She shaved it all off. Then she did a photo shoot bald.

On Mondays, 1.2 million Instagram followers expect for her NSFW #MackMonday photographs, and there was a lot of positive feedback for her new look. Social media has had its trolls, merely Mack has besides found a community of nameless supporters, many of them women. She inspires an unusually personal connexion with some of her fans.

In the weeks after she was browbeaten, Mack got dozens of messages from well-wishers. They were raw with feeling, many containing stories of the writer'due south ain abuse. At the everyman moment of her own life, Mack had difficulty trying to blot more pain. She answered a few, and so packed those letters into a cupboard. Anytime she might get back to them.

Mack sees a solar day in her future when she can be a conduit for healing. Information technology isn't here yet, and she is in some ways still grappling with how this all happened. "Growing up, I never saw myself being that person," Mack says.

Many of the women who contact her tell similar stories of a pattern of abuse. At a pretrial hearing in Nov, Mack testified to many of those details in a courtroom across from Koppenhaver. She said she had endured a history of sexual violence from Koppenhaver, the telling of which elicited laughs and smiles from the accused. Prosecutors asked the estimate to note in the courtroom record that Koppenhaver had been laughing, to which his attorneys objected.

"I watched him express mirth," the judge said. "Information technology's noted."

***

When Kristen Paruginog, head of Break The Silence Against Domestic Violence, a peer-to-peer anti-domestic violence network, heard virtually the abuse Mack was getting from Koppenhaver fans, she reached out. Mack had actually donated to a Las Vegas-based shelter in the calendar month before her attack and was looking for an outlet. "She has a huge platform that could let her to be that voice," Paruginog said.

Mack has joined forces with Pause The Silence, though she realizes that her time in porn complicates the domestic violence community's willingness to embrace her. Men and women who piece of work in sex-related fields are hardly the but ones who suffer from domestic violence, only like beingness from a wealthy family or having a white-collar job is no insulation. In fact, merely in the past yr or then, porn stars have begun coming frontwards with remarkable stories of -- surprise! -- being pretty much just like the remainder of us.

She hopes the next chapter in her life involves turning her story into some good for the cause of domestic violence awareness. She'll testify this autumn when Koppenhaver's case goes to trial. She says he emailed her once after the alleged attack and said, "I forgive you. Nosotros can move out to the middle of nowhere and breed snakes."

He never said he was deplorable.

On October. 14, Koppenhaver was found unresponsive in his Las Vegas prison cell with a makeshift cloth noose around his cervix. A lengthy note in Koppenhaver's handwriting read, "They wanna accuse me with battery and (domestic violence)? Fine, exercise it, but don't railroad me with B.S. fantasy charges like Rape! Attempted murder! Kidnapping! And Burglary! Information technology's making it impossible for justice. I'm a good person with a huge heart, and everyone who knows me knows that, peculiarly Christy."

Koppenhaver'southward vital signs quickly returned to normal, and he was placed in solitary confinement on suicide watch. He has written frequently from prison via his Twitter handle, always maintaining his innocence. (Sua would not confirm Koppenhaver himself is behind the tweets. "I can't comment on that at this time," Sua says.)

He has found Jesus, the tweets say, and wonders whether this new understanding could take made a divergence earlier. He and supporters -- including his attorney -- tweet using the hashtag "FreeWarMachine." Sua says there is a writ of habeas corpus hearing gear up for April 22, in which Koppenhaver'due south defence will make the case to release him. "In that location's a lot that we want you to know, that we desire the public to know and that will come out at the appropriate time," Sua says.

Mack will be watching closely. State of war Machine's trial is tentatively set for September.

"It hurt so much to know he was then separated from the situation. He nevertheless hasn't taken responsibility to this day," Mack says. "He blames his babyhood, he blames me, he blames fighting. He claims he found God now -- he'southward looking for whatever kind of way not to take responsibility for what happened."

What's next for Mack? She wants to become active in the domestic violence community, and says she's done with porn films. She expects to proceed making personal appearances and dancing -- she recently took a refresher course in pole dancing, which she says she enjoys.

In the immediate futurity, Mack is planning a new tattoo. During her recovery, information technology was the last thing she wanted, self-inflicted pain on tiptop of all the other agony.

But this ane is going to be beautiful. It will start at her right shoulder and arch around, taking up some of the available real estate on her back. She hasn't decided on the specific image yet, but information technology'll be designed to embrace a tattoo she got a while ago. One that is all the same there. One that she doesn't want any more.

It says, "Property of War Machine."