ONE Championship end of year awards: top five fights of 2022
- There were some unforgettable MMA fights in the ONE Circle in 2022, including Xiong Jingnan and Angela Lee’s back-and-forth trilogy
- Kickboxing and Muay Thai also delivered, as Jon Di Bella, Hiroki Akimoto, and Liam Harrison all came out on top in thrilling bouts
There were some unforgettable fights in ONE Championship in 2022 – not just in mixed martial arts, but in kickboxing, and Muay Thai as well.
As we near the end of the calendar, here are our favourite ONE fights of the year, and our pick for the best of the bunch.
5. Xiong Jingnan vs Angela Lee III
On October 1, in the main event of ONE on Prime Video 2 in Singapore, atomweight MMA champion Angela Lee climbed up to strawweight to challenge Xiong Jingnan in a bid for a second title. It was the pair’s third meeting in the Circle, after scoring a win apiece in their first two fights.
China’s Xiong won their first encounter by fifth-round TKO, and the Canadian-American Lee won the second by fifth-round submission. Both fights were very competitive and extremely entertaining, so expectations were high ahead of their third meeting.
In the end, it lived up to those expectations, as the two women gave us another dramatic contest over five rounds.
Xiong nearly finished Lee with punches in the first round, but once again flaunting her limitless toughness, the atomweight champion clawed her way back into the fight over the following four rounds – to the point it was not clear which way the judges would score the contest when it was over.