ONE Championship: UFC’s Islam Makhachev tells Christian Lee ‘we’ll see how good you are’ against Saygid Izagakhmaev
- UFC lightweight champion responds after call-out from his ONE counterpart, telling Lee to ‘focus on your next contender Saygid’
- Makhachev was in Singapore to corner his teammate Izagakhmaev for impressive win over Shinya Aoki
It seems that ONE Championship’s Christian Lee will need to get through Saygid Izagakhmaev before there is any serious talk of a cross-promotional super fight with UFC star Islam Makhachev.
Lee, ONE’s lightweight champion, returned to action at the promotion’s double-header of events last Saturday in Singapore, where he defeated Kiamrian Abbasov by fourth-round TKO to win the welterweight MMA title.
“Focus on your next contender Saygid Izagakhmaev,” Makhachev, 31, wrote on Twitter in response to Lee’s call-out. “We will see how good you are.”
Izagakhmaev was also in action in Singapore, defeating former lightweight champion Shinya Aoki by first-round TKO, with Makhachev in his corner. That win pushed him to 3-0 in the promotion, and asserted him as one of the top contenders for Lee’s lightweight belt.
Canadian-American Lee, 24, has long acknowledged Izagakhmaev as a future title challenger, but after his win over Abbasov, seemed more interested in a showdown with the visiting Makhachev.
“I know [Makhachev] would be down for a fight like that, he’s a true competitor like myself,” the two-division ONE champ told the Post after his win. “Then it just comes down to the promotions, if they can come together and make a fight like that happen, because it would be huge.”
It remains to be seen if the UFC would ever play ball on this kind of cross-promotional super fight – the Las Vegas-based promotion does not usually play well with others – but ONE Chairman and CEO Chatri Sityodtong is open to the idea.
“The only co-promotion I’m interested in is UFC,” he told the Post on Saturday. “Champion versus champion.”
Chatri has ‘no interest’ in trading for UFC’s Yan, co-promoting with Bellator
It seems that Makhachev still needs some convincing – but the famously loyal Russian may change his tune if Lee beats his teammate Izagakhmaev.
Makhachev (23-1) won lightweight gold with a second-round submission of Charles Oliveira at UFC 280 in October in Abu Dhabi. He has yet to defend his title, but is slated to do so at UFC 284 in February in Perth, Australia, when he takes on featherweight champ Alexander Volkanovski.
Lee (17-4) first won the ONE lightweight belt with a win over Shinya Aoki in 2019. He then defended it with stoppages over Iuri Lapicus and Timofey Nastyukhin, before surrendering it in a razor-close decision loss with South Korea’s Ok Rae-yoon. He reclaimed the belt with a quick second-round TKO win over Ok in September.
