MMAmania.com
“It definitely has a greater meaning to me now,” Lee said of her “Unstoppable” nickname. “For me, you go through adversity, you go through hard times. You get knocked down but you get back up and you keep going. That’s what ‘Unstoppable’ means to me.”
ONE Championship atomweight titleholder, Angela Lee, is injury free for the first time in nearly two years, after recovering from a near-fatal car accident in O’ahu, Hawaii, one that left her with a concussion, as well as a serious back injury.
See the photo here.
Living up to her “Unstoppable” nickname, Lee (8-2) admits to rushing through the healing process in order to defend her 105-pound title against Mei Yamaguchi in the promotion’s May 2018 headliner, just six months after rolling her car in “The Aloha State.”
Not that anyone could stop her.
“Everyone was trying to keep her on the sidelines, but it’s hard to tell an athlete to sit out and rest,” Lee’s father and head coach, Ken Lee, told MMAmania.com. “Just because you can’t see any damage on the outside doesn’t mean you’re 100 percent on the inside, but Angela is a champion and has a champion’s mindset. She wanted to compete and defend her title.”
Lee captured a five-round decision over her Japanese rival but did hit some rough waters in the second half of the fight. Undaunted, the United MMA product agreed to move up in weight for a champion vs. champion “super fight” against Chinese juggernaut Xiong Jing Nan last March.
Despite a commanding performance early in the bout, Lee succumbed to strikes in the fifth and final frame, then came up short in her rebound fight against unheralded jiu-jitsu ace, Michelle Nicolini, just four months later.
“I feel like that wasn’t my best performance and if I could play it back again, hopefully I can get that one back down the road,” Lee said. “But yeah, it was disappointing man. To have back-to-back losses, even though it was a really close fight and I thought like I was doing well, just to have it not go your way, to have another loss on your record, it definitely makes you doubt yourself. But I’m not gonna let those losses go to waste. If I can take anything from it, I’ll take it as a lesson and try and grow from it, and learn from it and that’s what I’m doing.”
What lessons the 23 year-old Lee has learned will be on display when she rematches Xiong Jing Nan in the ONE: “Century” main event on Oct. 13 in Tokyo, Japan, though it will be the strawweight “Panda” who will be changing weight classes for their second go-round.
Advantage Lee?
“It’s definitely gonna be interesting, [105] is a tough weight class, a tough weight to make especially if you’ve never competed there before,” Lee said. “For me, I know what it takes to get to that weight. It’s a struggle, but it’s familiar territory for me, so I’m not sure how it’s going to play on her.”
Xiong (14-1) has been a veritable nightmare at 115 pounds, racking up nine straight wins with six brutal finishes. That includes five consecutive victories under the ONE Championship banner, where she appears to get stronger with each performance.
Lee is ready for the challenge.
“I feel like I’ve made so much progress and so much growth since that last fight,” she said. “My body’s able to do a lot more now. Earlier in the year in March, I was recovering from a back injury, so now I have no limitations, no injuries and I feel a lot stronger, so we were able to tighten up a lot of areas that I couldn’t have worked on before, including a lot more cardio, a lot more wrestling, boxing rounds, stuff like that.”
ONE: “Century” will air live in the United States on Oct. 13 on TNT and B/R Live.