ONE Championship: Angela Lee admits Stamp Fairtex punch ‘scared’ her, but denies being vulnerable to good body shot
- ONE atomweight queen Lee has been hurt by body shots in two recent fights, but denies being vulnerable in this area
- ‘Honestly, a liver shot is the way to beat anyone,’ she says. ‘Your body just shuts down’
Midway through the first round of her title defence against Stamp Fairtex last month, ONE atomweight champion Angela Lee was badly hurt by a sizzling punch to the body.
For a moment, it looked like she was done for, as she was almost doubled over in pain. But she weathered that adversity to win the fight by second-round submission to the roar of the ONE X crowd inside the packed Singapore Indoor Stadium.
“It took the wind out of me, for sure,” Lee (11-2) said. “I was trying to catch my breath and trying to recover. I was scared, I didn’t want [the referee] to stop the fight. So that’s why – as much pain as I was in – I tried my hardest to keep fighting, keep throwing punches, to try to move forward, defend myself, and just keep moving. I didn’t want an early stoppage.”
The fight with Stamp was not the first time Lee has been badly hurt by a body shot. In a 2019 loss to ONE strawweight champion Xiong Jingnan, the 25-year-old Canadian-American was stung and ultimately stopped by a vicious fifth-round kick to the midsection.
Having seen Lee get hurt by body shots more than once, some fans – and undoubtedly some of the champion’s rivals – now believe attacking her torso could be the key to usurping the atomweight throne.
But Lee insists she no more vulnerable to body attacks than anybody else.
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“Honestly, a liver shot is the way to beat anyone,” she said. “It’s the right technique. Heavyweights can’t take liver shots. Your body just shuts down. I was really just proud of myself for just doing what I needed to do in order to keep the fight [with Stamp] going.”
“It was timed perfectly. I did a lot of body conditioning. I made sure I was in the best shape of my life. It was just the right placement at the right time. I was throwing a two – a cross – and just got exposed. It was a good shot, I’ve got to hand it to her.”
Despite that early scare, Lee turned the tables on her rival by dragging the fight to the mat. From there, she unleashed a procession of submission attempts.
While Stamp was able to thwart many of those, she ultimately tapped out after a rear-naked choke in the waning moments of round two.
Lee said she had specifically trained for the techniques her opponent would use to fight off her submission moves, and her team had made sure she was “always one step ahead”.
“One thing that I think helped me is that I didn’t want to die in any submissions,” she said. “I didn’t want to hold onto anything and fry my arms out, fry my legs out.
“So if I knew that I don’t think this [submission] in, I don’t think this is going to be a finishing move, let’s transition to the next movement before she escapes or before I burn myself out.”
“I just kept going with the flow and transitioning from one movement into the next until I knew that I needed to hit her with a choke to make sure it’s 100 per cent.”
The win over Stamp was Lee’s first since the end of 2019, when she improved to 1-1 in her rivalry with Xiong with a fifth-round submission victory. It was her first fight since the birth of her first child.
From here, all signs point to Lee defending her title against South Korean contender Ham Seo-hee, who defeated Denice Zamboanga in Singapore, or climbing back up to the strawweight division to settle her trilogy with Xiong.
