ONE Championship: Stamp Fairtex embraces underdog tag for Angela Lee showdown as grand prix triumph caps swing in fortunes
- Former ONE atomweight Muay Thai and kick-boxing queen gets a taste of what it means to be a three-sport champ with victory over Ritu Phogat
- But now comes the real test against ‘Unstoppable’ Lee, the reigning MMA divisional champ whom Stamp admits holds the advantage
It’s fair to say Stamp Fairtex was at the lowest point of her combat sports career just nine months ago.
Having seen both her atomweight Muay Thai and kick-boxing titles snatched from her grasp in tight decisions last year, she then suffered her first MMA defeat in February, being adjudged to have tapped out to Alyona Rassohyna’s guillotine choke with just seven seconds remaining of a fight she had dominated.
But the swings in fortune this game provides are no more evident than in the case of the 24-year-old Thai, who capped an improbable triumph in ONE Championship’s atomweight grand prix on Friday night with a second-round submission victory over Ritu Phogat in the tournament final at Singapore Indoor Stadium.
“I think that everyone has these kind of upsides and downfalls – it’s normal to go up and down in your life,” Stamp told the Post after her victory. “And during the last two years of training, I was jumping around moving from kick-boxing to Muay Thai and MMA, so it makes you lose kind of a balance.
“But right now in this last 12 months, I’m all focused on MMA, and I’m very glad that my focus and energy came out and I made it to this moment,” she added.