5 Defining Moments: Angela Lee

Angela Lee has spent the duration of her professional mixed martial arts career under the One Championship banner, becoming the promotion’s strawweight queen along the way.

Though she is just 24 years old, Lee has already enjoyed quite the journey, with numerous memorable bouts and milestones. The woman known as “Unstoppable” is currently on hiatus following the birth of her daughter, Ava Marie, in April. Here is a look five moments that have come to define One’s reigning atomweight champ.

One Championship “Full Blast” airs Friday in more than 150 countries on televisions, tablets, computers and mobile devices at 8:30 a.m. ET.

1. A Golden Beginning

Lee carried the weight of championship gold before she even turned pro. Just three fights into her amateur MMA tenure, the Canadian-American fighter of Singaporean, Chinese and Korean descent claimed her first title belt when she submitted Audrey Perkins with an armbar 2:04 into the opening stanza of their bout at Destiny MMA “Na Koa 7” at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center in Honolulu, Hawaii on Nov. 2, 2014. The finishing sequence foreshadowed big things to come: Lee executed a powerful belly-to-back suplex, unloaded with punches from back mount and then locked in the fight-ending submission. Less than a year later, Lee made her professional debut.

2. Milestone Effort

Lee kicked off her tenure in the Singapore-based promotion with five consecutive triumphs, but she really raised her profile in her sixth appearance, when she defeated Mei Yamaguchi via unanimous decision at the appropriately-named One “Ascent to Power” to capture the organization’s atomweight (115-pound) belt on May 6, 2016. At 19 years old, Lee became the youngest person to win a championship in a major organization. That groundbreaking victory reportedly made Lee one of the highest-paid female fighters in the world at the time.

3. Overcoming Adversity

Lee was slated to make her third atomweight title defense in a rematch against Yamaguchi on Nov. 24, 2017 before a harrowing near-death experience put those plans on hold. Three weeks before that scheduled event, Lee fell asleep while driving to the gym, and her vehicle flipped over multiple times. Fortunately, she emerged with only a concussion, some minor burns and a beat-up body. The matchup was postponed until May 2018, where Lee returned and retained her crown with a closely-contested five-round verdict over Yamaguchi at One “Unstoppable Dreams.”

4. Double-Champ Dreams Denied

Firmly entrenched in her reign at atomweight, Lee made a bid to become a two-division title holder at One Championship “A New Era,” where she squared off against reigning strawweight (125-pound) queen Jingnan Xiong. At an event that marked the Singapore-based promotion’s Tokyo debut and featured numerous current and former champions, Lee appeared poised to add to her trophy case when she applied a tight armbar on Xiong in the fourth round. However, Xiong was able to survive and secure the finish in Round 5, when she hurt Lee with a right hand to the body and swarmed for the finish, tagging her foe with punches to the head and kicks to the midsection until the challenger turned away in a sign of surrender at the 1:37 mark of the period.

5. Payback Time

Perhaps emboldened by her previous victory, Xiong moved down a division to challenge for Lee’s atomweight title at One Championship “Century” on Oct. 12, 2019. Xiong had the edge on the feet in the early rounds and even rocked Lee with a high kick in the fourth stanza. This time, it was Lee who authored the decisive moment in the final frame, as she suplexed her opponent, took Xiong’s back and locked in a rear-naked choke to elicit the tapout 4:48 into Round 5. After a two-bout skid at 125 pounds, Lee reminded everyone why she sits atop the One atomweight throne.