Sports blog information from USA TODAY.
With another action-packed month of MMA in the books, MMA Junkie looks at the best fights from November 2022.
With another action-packed month of MMA in the books, MMA Junkie looks at the best fights from November 2022: Here are the five nominees, listed in chronological order, and winner of MMA Junkie’s Fight of the Month award for November.
At the bottom of the post, let us know if we got it right by voting on your choice.
After he captured a second ONE Championship title, Christian Lee wants to go after the UFC’s best in Islam Makhachev.
After he captured a second ONE Championship title, [autotag]Christian Lee[/autotag] wants to go after the UFC’s best.
Lee (17-4), ONE Championship’s lightweight title holder, had a comeback for the ages when he rallied to TKO Kiamrian Abbasov to capture the welterweight title in the main event of ONE on Prime Video 4 at Singapore Indoor Stadium.
Now a dual-champion, Lee wants to challenge himself by going against dominant UFC lightweight champion [autotag]Islam Makhachev[/autotag] (23-1).
“I saw a recent video where a fellow competitor over in the UFC, Islam Makhachev, called me out,” Lee said at his post-fight news conference. “He’s inviting me over to the UFC to fight him for his lightweight title. I would love to make that fight happen. Let’s see it. Let’s do a cross-promotion event: lightweight world champion from UFC against lightweight world champion from ONE Championship. We’ll see who’s the real best lightweight in the world.”
Lee plans to move back down to lightweight for his next title defense, but if he’s thinking outside the box, he likes the Makhachev fight.
“Right now, I’m the lightweight world champion (and) the welterweight world champion. I want to fight the best of the best,” Lee said. “So whoever that may be. … A potential crossover fight between UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev, that’s definitely an exciting fight. But we’ll see where it goes. I’m keeping my options open and just whatever I could do to challenge myself.”
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Christian Lee will compete for a title in a third division at ONE on Prime Video 4 hoping to finally achieve champ-champ status.
[autotag]Christian Lee[/autotag] always has wanted to chase ONE Championship double champ status.
Lee (16-4) reclaimed his lightweight belt in August with a knockout of Rae Yoon Ok, who’d previously took it from him in a decision he thought he won. Lee will now go after a second belt against Kiamrian Abbasov (23-5) in the main event of ONE on Prime Video 4, which takes place Friday at Singapore Indoor Stadium in Singapore.
Abbasov was the welterweight champion. However, he was stripped of the belt after weighing in at 186.25 pounds. The stakes don’t change for Lee, who made weight. If he wins, he will be the new welterweight champ.
“When I started off my MMA career, my first goal was always to be a world champion and then second right behind it was to become a world champion in a second division,” Lee told MMA Junkie Radio. “I always wanted to win two. So when the opportunity presented itself to fight for a second world title, to fight for the welterweight belt, it was too good of an opportunity to pass up, so I’m very excited to have this opportunity.”
Although Lee was a title challenger at featherweight, he won’t change too much in his move up to welterweight. It’s a relatively quick turnaround – especially moving up a weight class.
But Lee said it’s not about size.
“I’m just taking the same mindset, the same approach I took in my first fight at lightweight,” Lee said. “When I moved up from featherweight to lightweight it was also straight away for the title and in that fight, I wasn’t so much focused on my weight. I wasn’t focused on being a big guy in the lightweight division. My main focus was on keeping my speed – of course allowing myself to naturally float up to the weight class limit,
“But just trying to be faster than ever, stronger than ever, continuing to work on my cardio so that I was able to have a good gas tank, and that’s the same thing (I did) for this fight camp. I’m not worried about being a bigger guy or about being a smaller guy. I’m just training as hard as I can. … I think the key to this fight for me is going to be the preparation. It’s not going to come down to who’s heavier or lighter there.”
ONE on Prime Video 4 streams entirely on Amazon Prime, starting with prelims at 8 p.m. ET and the main card at 10 p.m. ET.
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ONE Championship’s fourth event on Amazon Prime Video takes place Friday and features four MMA fights, including a main event for gold.
ONE Championship’s second event of the week will serve as its fourth event on Amazon Prime Video. ONE on Prime Video 4 features four MMA fights, including a main event with gold on the line.
Here’s how to watch the ONE on Prime Video 4 card from Singapore, where welterweight champion Kiamrian Abbasov (23-5) puts his title on the line against lightweight champ Christian Lee (16-4).
