Xiong Jing Nan Ends Angela Lee Rivalry In Rousing Fashion To Retain Strawweight Gold

History repeated itself on Saturday, October 1 (Friday, September 30 in the United States) as Xiong Jing Nan once again impeded Angela Lee from fully realizing her dream of becoming a two-division mixed martial arts (MMA) world champion.

"The Panda" made sure that she would come back home to China with the women's strawweight championship wrapped around her waist by prevailing over the reigning atomweight queen in their trilogy bout that headlined ONE on Prime Video 2.

Talks of a champion-versus-champion showdown began as soon as Xiong was enshrined as the inaugural ONE women's strawweight titleholder with a lopsided drubbing of Tiffany Teo over four years ago.

Their first cage meeting was originally set to happen in November 2018, but the injuries that Lee sustained from a car accident forced her to pull out of the bout.

Lee recovered just in time for the Singapore-based combat sports outfit's first live event in Tokyo, Japan in March 2019, which saw Xiong author a thunderous fifth-round technical knockout to retain the women's strawweight belt.

It was a different story in the rematch seven months later when Lee's atomweight trinket was up for grabs as she exacted revenge on Xiong courtesy of a rear-naked choke in the fifth round.

Heading into the third and final chapter of their grueling rivalry at the 12,000-seater Singapore Indoor Stadium, both ladies were determined to lay claim to the status as the most dominant female competitor to ever grace the promotion.

With a point to prove, Lee showed no fear in the opening sequences of the championship clash as she surprisingly opted to engage in on-feet exchanges with a feared striker such as Xiong, who gladly obliged by having the first few minutes of the fight in her natural habitat and returning fire with a heavy load of punches.

It did not take too long for Xiong to make Lee pay for it, wobbling the Singaporean-American with a solid left hook before scoring a knockdown with a right straight soon after.

With Lee reeling from the heavy blows she took from Xiong's punches, the Chinese sensed blood and attempted to wrap it up right there and then by raining down a flurry of remorseless punches.

As referee Herb Dean stood by and seemed ready to step in to save Lee from further punishment, the reigning women's atomweight champion found a way to somehow put a stop to the barrage by clinging onto the lead leg of Xiong.

This strategy permitted Lee to survive and regain her bearings, going into the second frame where she finally had the opportunity to demonstrate her highly-touted pedigree in the grappling department.

Though the strawweight empress mounted all effort to sustain a toe-to-toe pace of action and avoid being taken down, Xiong was caught in a dangerous situation when Lee latched on a standing anacoda choke while drilling knees to the body.

Acknowledging that Lee managed to recover and display what made her a world champion, Xiong came out with guns blazing in the third canto as she blitzed through her foe's defenses with well-placed boxing combinations.

Even though Xiong was on the driver's seat courtesy of her renowned striking, Lee took the risk to fight fire with fire and found home with the shots she hurled towards her rival.

As Lee started to get comfortable in the stand-up, Xiong warned and reminded her opponent that trading leather remains her expertise as she targeted the Hawaiian's Kryptonite—the midsection.

The fourth and fifth rounds saw Xiong build the gap between her and the challenger, landing the much cleaner and more significant strikes through her counterpunches as Lee pressed forward with the intent to overwhelm the Chinese champion.

After going full five rounds this time around, Xiong's efforts were rewarded by the three judges at cageside with a unanimous decision victory.

The scintillating performance at the expense of Lee allowed Xiong to move up with an improved professional record of 18-2 and keep her undefeated streak at strawweight intact.

On the other hand, Lee downgraded to an 11-3 win-loss slate and experienced her third-straight defeat at strawweight.

Undercard Results

In the co-main event, Mikey Musumeci leaned on his defense-centric ploy to outlast Cleber Sousa via unanimous decision in a 10-minute joust, becoming the inaugural ONE flyweight submission grappling champion.

No. 1-ranked MMA atomweight and former two-sport ONE champion Stamp Fairtex bounced back from a lackluster start to put on an all-around performance in the succeeding rounds, shutting down Jihin Radzuan en route to a unanimous decision victory.

Proving to her naysayers that she completely blossomed into a complete mixed martial artist, Stamp outgrappled Radzuan for the majority of the second round and even situated Malaysia's "Shadow Cat" in a precarious position with a deep rear-naked choke.

Radzuan got a taste of Stamp's dreaded striking as the Thai heroine decked her opponent with a solid elbow that opened the floodgates of blood from the Malaysian's nose.

In a last-ditch effort in the dying minutes of the third stanza, Radzuan tried to snare the winning moment from Stamp, applying a tight leg-scissor choke.

However, Stamp managed to find the escape door and fended off the No. 5-rated atomweight until the final bell.

The decision win over Radzuan allowed Stamp to keep the top spot in the women's atomweight rankings while redeeming herself from her unsuccessful campaign to overthrow Lee this past March.

Meanwhile, Russian debutant Ilya Freymanov put the ONE Championship featherweight MMA division on notice as he made quick work of Martin Nguyen, dropping the former two-division titlist to the mat with a right straight before forcing referee Olivier Coste to call a halt to the action at 3:33 of the very first round with a plethora of unforgiving punches and knee strikes.

Opening the main card of ONE on Prime Video 2 was a hard-hitting lightweight MMA encounter, where promotional newcomer Halil Amir authored a grand entrance in ONE Championship by stopping former world title challenger Timofey Nastyukhin at the 0:55 mark of the second round.

Both Freymanov and Amir received a $50,000 bonus for their respective knockout wins.

To cap off the lead card, Marat Grigorian outpointed Tayfun Ozcan to claim the unanimous decision in their featherweight kickboxing clash.

Under MMA rules, South Korean up-and-comer Oh Ho Taek survived a barbaric back-and-forth featherweight match to eke out a split decision against Japanese veteran Ryogo Takahashi.

In a 52.28-kilogram catchweight Muay Thai tiff, Anissa Meksen overcame the stern test brought by Dangkongfah Banchamek to walk out with the unanimous decision.

A ONE Heavyweight Kickboxing World Grand Prix alternate contest earned the privilege to raise the curtain and set the exciting tone for ONE Championship's sophomore appearance on Amazon Prime Video 2 as Rade Opacic defeated Giannis "Hercules" Stoforidis via knockout in the second round.

Nissi Icasiano is a sportswriter, analyst and editor from the Philippines. He started his professional career in 2013. He has also written for various media outlets such as Rappler.com, ABS-CBN, Tiebreaker Times, Philboxing.com, MSN.com, South China Morning Post, The Phnom Penh Post and the International Business Times. In 2017, he started a career as a Combat Sports Analyst for television and radio, appearing on various news shows for ABS-CBN, GMA, TV5, Radyo Singko 92.3 News FM, PTV 4, Business World, Radyo Pilipinas 2 and Bombo Radyo Philippines. He practices boxing at Tiger City Boxing Gym whenever he is not writing.