Issue 209

September 2024

Kyle Dimond’s powerful take on Christian Lee’s fight at ONE 169 – where family, loss, and strength collide.

At ONE 169, two-weight world champion Christian Lee returns to defend his lightweight title in Atlanta. November 8 isn’t just a huge moment for his career. It’s a massive step for his family, who are closely connected to the history of ONE Championship. In the final days of 2022, the Lee family went through one of their most challenging moments. Christian’s younger sister, Victoria, took her own life at 18 years old. Here’s how the tragedy had a huge impact on Christian and his other siblings.

THE HIGHEST OF HIGHS

Christian Lee first signed to ONE Championship at 17 years old. Having spent nine years in the promotion, he has racked up accolades for having the most wins, finishes, and knockouts through 21 pro fights. In 2019, he joined his older sister Angela at the top of the food chain by becoming a world champion when he stopped Shinya Aoki to win the lightweight title. 

Once he’d cemented himself as the best in his weight class, he challenged Kiamrian Abbasov for the welterweight title in an iconic fight. He lived up to his nickname: ‘The Warrior,’ overcoming adversity in the opening round where the fight looked seconds away from being waved off. After weathering a hellacious storm, Lee pressured Abbasov and stopped his opponent in the fourth round. It was a massive comeback victory for the 24-year-old who joined Aung La N Sang, Anatoly Malykhin, Reinier de Ridder, and Martin Nguyen as the only fighters to hold multiple belts simultaneously in ONE Championship. 

In an interview with Fighters Only, Lee reflected on the night nearly two years after it took place. 

"That fight was definitely a tough one,” he says. “I think that it, for the most part, went according to plan other than the one shot that changed it early on in the first round. At that moment, the game plan goes out the door. It's about survival.”

In his post-fight interviews, the most pressing question Lee faced was which weight and challenger would be next. After what he and his family experienced the next month, these questions stopped being relevant.

THE LOWEST OF LOWS

Born into a martial arts family, all the Lee siblings were raised on the mats. Having started from a young age, there’s a reason why Victoria Lee was nicknamed ‘The Prodigy.’ At 18, she’d won several junior Pankration and IMMAF wrestling tournaments, and she was 3-0 in her pro-MMA career with ONE Championship. It had been over a year since she had competed by December 26, 2022, when she tragically took her own life. Her older sister Angela Lee, the ONE Atomweight World Champion, announced the news, and the MMA world immediately showed its support. In an interview with Daniel Cormier for ESPN MMA in September of 2023, Angela spoke publicly about this difficult time. 

“For me, I’m happy to share about Victoria and all that she was,” said Angela. “Just an incredible human being at 18 years old. I don’t even know where to start. Just a brilliant, brilliant individual. So talented from martial arts to, cooking and painting and baking, and playing instruments. She really could do it all, and she was all self-taught, so she had the discipline to go and if she wanted to learn something, she’d go and figure it out on her own. Being the older sister, the oldest of my family, I always kind of took it on myself to be like the mini-mom and always looking out for my siblings. I really tried my best to have open communication and really take care of each individual relationship with my siblings and with everything that happened with Victoria, and especially with how it just took everyone by complete surprise like nobody saw it coming at all, and we consider ourselves like pretty close, you know? And so, after what happened, just everything changed because it was such a, she was just part of our puzzle, which is our family, and now there’s a piece missing, and so for that, it’s never gonna be the same.”

Shortly after these comments, Angela decided to retire from MMA.

Christian Lee told Fighters Only that he is proud of Angela for making such a difficult decision. 

“I'm happy for my sister, and I'm happy that she decided to walk away when she felt like it was time,” he says. “You see a lot of fighters; they keep fighting well after their heart is in it, and you see by their results, so I'm glad she got out when she did and that she's moving on to her next chapter in life."

HONORING HER SISTER

At ONE Fight Night 14, an interim atomweight champion was set to be crowned in Angela Lee’s understandable absence. Instead, before the main event in Singapore, Angela Lee announced she would vacate the title and retire from MMA at 27. In the following days, she wrote about the struggles she has faced in her career. In 2017, Angela withdrew from a title defense following a car accident. In 2023, she revealed that the car accident was a purposeful attempt to take her own life. Despite everything appearing to be perfect, she was dealing with pressure, specifically to make weight for this fight, which was starting to become an impossible task. On November 6, 2017, she attempted to break her arm or give herself a concussion to have a reason to withdraw from the fight. When that didn’t work, she got in the car and drove into a guardrail. She didn’t tell anyone, claiming it was an accident to everyone besides her husband. 

Lee chose to speak openly about this following Victoria’s passing. Part of her reason for retiring wasn’t just the accumulation of years of pressure, she wanted to make a difference and help others. Lee created Fightstory, a non-profit organization established in her sister's honor to raise awareness for mental wellness through people discussing their experiences. Angela felt alone and at her lowest, and she couldn’t tell anybody about her struggles.

With Angela retiring, there was news that Christian, and his younger brother Adrian had returned to training. Christian told Fighters Only that despite not being able to compete, the time that he and his brother were able to invest in their training allowed them both to become far better mixed martial artists.

THE PHENOM ARRIVES 

Despite plans to return in February, fans would have to wait longer for news regarding two-weight champ Christian Lee. However, he would be back in a fight week once again when the youngest of the siblings, Adrian Lee, became the first of his family to compete since Victoria’s passing. 

"It was a very familiar feeling, but it was nice to be able to come back and to coach Adrian after all of that time off,” Christian says. “To walk him through the process, the process that I've gone through so many times, and then just to get him ready for it. I feel like, in a way it was also getting me ready to get back in there as well."

Like his late sister, Adrian has competed in martial arts tournaments and amateur competitions from a young age. After signing with ONE Championship, he made his pro debut at ONE 167 in June 2024. With his older brother in his corner, it was business as usual for the Lee family as Adrian earned his first finish inside the Impact Arena in Bangkok. During the media day ahead of his 18-year-old brother’s ONE debut, Christian spoke to Nick Atkin in an interview for Sportskeeda, where he said that despite the delays around his return, walking away from MMA after what his family had been through wasn’t something that he had seriously considered.

“Of course, it was a tough time, so fighting was the last thing that I was thinking about but at the end of the day, this is the profession I chose,” said Christian. “I have a family to take care of, and it’s still something that I love to do. I love to go in there and train. I love to go in there and fight. So yeah, I think at the end of the day, it was never going to be an option for me.”

His delayed return benefitted both him and Adrian. The two brothers are perfect training partners for each other, which has given Adrian the benefit of learning alongside a world champion. Christian has gained a new perspective by stepping into a coaching role.

"I've been coaching martial arts for a long time now, but it wasn't until I got my brother into ONE and coached him in his fights that I was really coaching somebody at the highest level professionally,” says Christian. “It was a really good experience for the both of us, and we both learned a lot and I feel like part of what helped me develop so much as a fighter myself was stepping into the role as coach and taking that on for my brother."

This kind of family camaraderie is a rarity in MMA and the brothers know it. 

“It's perfect,” smiled Christian. “Thankfully, we have a great team right now, but back a few months ago, it was just the two of us. We would just train, and it works out great. To have somebody that fights in the same division, extremely talented, endless cardio, loves to work hard, and you know, we have that trust, that bond as brothers, so when we're training, we know that there's no bad intentions in there. We're both just trying to help each other get better."

A NEW BEGINNING IN ATLANTA 

Christian’s presence loomed overhead at ONE Fight Night 23, where an interim lightweight title was on the line in the main event. Promotional newcomer Alibeg Rasulov defeated Ok Rae Yoon, a former rival of Christian, but after failing to pass his hydration test, he could not win the interim title. In the following weeks, the comeback was confirmed. At ONE 169, ONE Championship will make its debut in Atlanta. In one of four world title fights currently set for the State Farm Arena, it’ll be the returning Lee vs the 14-0 Rasulov for the lightweight gold.

After cornering for his younger brother again in September, the next time fight week comes around for the Lee family, it will finally be Christian’s moment. A lot has changed in the last two years, and his family has been through so much. Despite this, you only need to remember the last time he competed under the ONE banner to remember what ‘The Warrior’ is made of. In the opening round against Kiamrian Abbasov, it seemed impossible that Lee would survive, let alone win. Now, after an incredibly difficult period of tragedy and loss, he’s standing back on his feet, ready to begin a new round with his family in his corner. While their sister Angela has chosen to begin a new phase of her life, Christian and Adrian continue to represent their family in ONE Championship. ONE 169 will be an emotional period for all of them, but just as Victoria's memory lives on, so does the fighting spirit of her siblings. ONE lightweight world champion, Christian Lee, is back with ‘The Warrior’ in his mind and ‘The Prodigy’ in his heart.