Christian Lee calls for rematch between Angela Lee and Xiong Jing Nan

This weekend, in the main event of ONE Championship: Enter The Dragon, Christian Lee will partake in the biggest fight of his career as he challenges Japanese legend Shinya Aoki for the ONE Lightweight World Title. While this matchup is taking up most of his focus at present, he believes there could be another big fight for the Lee family in the very near future: a rematch between his sister, ONE Atomweight champ Angela Lee, and ONE Strawweight champ Xiong Jing Nan.

Angela Lee and Xiong Jing Nan first met in late March, at ONE: A New Era in Tokyo, Japan. This bout, which stands out as one of the best of the year so far, saw Xiong emerge the victor by fifth round TKO. That being said, Lee very nearly finished the fight herself in the fourth round, as she had Xiong locked up in a bone-bending armbar until the round ended.

Christian Lee says that this loss — which was no nearly a victory — was tough for his big sister to process. Yet he’s confident she’ll rebound from the setback the same we she’s rebounded from all the moments of adversity in her life.

“She came out with no injuries, hardly a bump or bruise on her body, but she was of course very upset, very disappointed with the outcome of the fight,” the younger Lee sibling told BJPenn.com. “It was her first professional loss, but she’s tasted defeat before. We grew up training, we grew up competing as kids. This isn’t the first time that she’s faced adversity, and this won’t be the last. She faces it every single day in the gym and in life. And she always tells me that. I know that she’ll come back much stronger, better, as a more complete version of herself. I feel bad for the next girl she has to face.”

Christian Lee is hoping the next girl Angela Lee fights will be Xiong Jing Nan. He believes the competitive and thrilling nature of the pair’s first more than warrants a rematch.

“I thought it was an amazing fight,” he said. “She went out there, she put on beautiful, beautiful display of her skills. Unfortunately, you know, there’s variables in a fight that you just can’t control. She banked on finishing the armbar and put everything she had into it and going into the fifth round after fighting for 20 minutes, putting it all on the line, you really can’t tell how your body’s going to react in that situation. So really it just came down to that last round. And to Xiong’s credit, she stepped up. She wanted to win that match. And you know, she did a great job as well.

“Absolutely [there should be a rematch],” he added. “Absolutely. I know that Xiong took the win in the first match, but it was just very slight strategical errors on Angela’s part, and having fixed that, if she gets a strong camp leading up to the next rematch, I know that that Angela will come away with the win for sure.”

Do you think we’ll see a rematch between Angela Lee and Xiong Jing Nan in the ONE Championship cage this year?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 5/13/2019.