Face Off

Angela Lee and Stamp Fairtex, two of One Championship’s grittiest and most talented champions, are set to headline the mixed martial arts organisation's 10th anniversary fight card as they duke it out for the world championship title

- Karen Tee

The tension is rising. The stakes are high. One is a defending mixed martial arts (MMA) champion looking to make her comeback after a more than two-year absence following her marriage and motherhood. The other is on a hot streak with two world titles to her name and her star on the ascendant.

Meet Angela Lee and Stamp Fairtex, two athletes who have experienced meteoric rises to the top of the women’s division at One Championship. On March 26, the duo, both hugely popular in their own right, will face off for the first time as they battle it out for the women’s atomweight world title, which Lee currently holds.

“I do feel there is a lot more pressure on my shoulders and a lot more expectations after going through a lot in the past two years of not fighting, getting pregnant, giving birth and recovering,” says Lee candidly in a Zoom interview from Hawaii, where she is currently based.

Lee, who is of Singaporean and South Korean descent, shot to global fame in 2016 as a 19-year-old MMA athlete when she inked a lucrative One Championship contract, which catapulted her to the ranks of the organisation’s top five earners.

“I am the champion of this division—and I have been since 2016. I know what it takes to capture the belt and I have defended it multiple times so this is no different,” she states with confidence.