ONE Championship: Angela Lee wants to see ‘more accountability’ in judging after fight reviews are scrapped
- Atomweight champ says it was ‘very clear to see’ judges made the wrong call in recent Supergirl vs Ekaterina Vandaryeva fight
- ‘Things need to just be a little more transparent, what’s the criteria they’re judging off?’ Lee says
The Asian martial arts promotion disbanded its controversial competition committee last month, after conducting two high-profile reviews at the back end of 2021. The panel upheld decision wins for Ham Seo-hee over Denice Zamboanga, and Ok Rae-yoon against Lee’s younger brother, Christian Lee.
The issue reared its head again when Thailand’s Supergirl Jaroonsak took a split decision against Ekaterina Vandaryeva at last week’s ONE: Heavy Hitters card.
“It’s so hard. There’s been a lot of bad calls from the judges,” Lee told the Post. “It’s frustrating, because as fighters we’re always pushing to get the finish, but sometimes at the highest level it’s not as easy.
“We train so hard and have so much on the line, we want to make sure even if we don’t finish we get the decision in our favour. Sometimes that doesn’t happen and it’s a bad call, it’s so frustrating.
“In the recent Supergirl fight with ‘Barbie’, as a fighter, as a third party, it’s very clear to see [it was the wrong decision], so it’s frustrating.
“If they’re not gonna be reviewing the fights, I don’t really know what they’re gonna be doing, how us as fighters can protest a bad call. But moving forward in my next fight, I am gonna do everything to not leave it in the hands of judges.”