The 23-year-old will defend her atomweight title against the Chinese “Panda”, having come up short in her bid to win Xiong’s strawweight title at Ryogoku Sumo Hall in March.

“She’s been an atomweight and we are stronger in strawweight,” Nicolini told the Post after the fight. “It’s a different division and it takes time and work to adapt. If she really wants to get better she has to work to get stronger, but I’m sure she’ll get there.”

First Lee has to make the descent back down to 115 pounds. It’s a division she hasn’t fought in for 14 months, when she eked out a win in an unconvincing title defence against Mei Yamaguchi.

And it is hard to ignore that, after cutting a swathe through easy competition, Lee has now struggled against three fighters who bring to the ring proven records.

First it was Yamaguchi, a Japanese veteran with 31 fights over 13 years. Then came Xiong, a warrior, hard as nails. And all you need to know about Nicolini is she’s got eight Brazilian jiu-jitsu world titles.

Life has also got in the way – she has had to grow mentally and emotionally, getting married and having a lucky escape from a serious car crash.

She and husband Bruno Pucci, the Brazilian fighter, are still waiting for his green card to be approved in the US, where they live in Hawaii. “That’s a bit complicated, we’re just in the process of doing that, just a few more months, fingers crossed,” Lee told the Post this week.

Lee’s dog, Rocky, also had to go in for emergency surgery a few weeks ago – another distraction. “He’s doing a lot better, my husband is staying at home with the pups,” she said. “He’s on some antibiotics but he’s getting better. He choked on a chew toy, like a rope toy, they were able to get it out, thank God.”

Lee has also grown physically – she is now a woman, no longer a teenager. “Honestly speaking, yes, I do feel like this is more my body’s natural weight division. It feels very strong here,” she said before the fight.

Xiong aside, Lee said she does not see where the next top atomweight challenger comes from either. So all signs point to her sticking around at strawweight.

But she has gone from being a big atomweight to a normal sized strawweight. “I think she was very confident with her ground game,” Nicolini said, “because I took her down and she didn’t really try to stop my takedowns. I think maybe she thought she could do the ground game equal to me.”

She can easily shrug off the disappointment of the last five months if she beats Xiong in their rematch, which would set her up for another tilt at becoming a two-weight champion.

The announcement of the Xiong rematch itself surely can’t have helped with her preparations for Nicolini. “It was a big surprise to me honestly, I woke up and saw the news and was like, ‘OK! Alright’,” Lee said.

Lee may now have to get in line, too – something the darling of One Championship won’t be used to. “If not Xiong Jingnan, I am here anyway. I’ll do what One wants me to do. I’m ready to have a fight for the title, very soon,” Nicolini said. The Brazilian 37-year-old has earned her chance. Few gave her the slightest hope against Lee – it was seen as a gimme for the Singaporean, a chance to get back in the win column.

Nicolini put a wrench in those plans. Now Lee goes into the Xiong fight with doubts in her mind. “We’ll have to – I’ll have to – do a lot of thinking, take a little bit of time off, and see how it goes,” a despondent Lee said in her emotional post-fight interview, where she looked on the verge of tears. This one hurt.

Every other time she’s had a setback, Lee has stayed positive and vowed to come back stronger. But on Friday night she looked and sounded like she didn’t know the way forward.

“Right now I feel pretty s*****, honestly. I don’t feel too great. I’m pretty disappointed in myself. I wish it would have been a better night,” she said.