Christian Lee always has wanted to chase ONE Championship double champ status.
Lee (16-4) reclaimed his lightweight belt in August with a knockout of Rae Yoon Ok, who’d previously took it from him in a decision he thought he won. Lee will now go after a second belt against Kiamrian Abbasov (23-5) in the main event of ONE on Prime Video 4, which takes place Friday at Singapore Indoor Stadium in Singapore.
Abbasov was the welterweight champion. However, he was stripped of the belt after weighing in at 186.25 pounds. The stakes don’t change for Lee, who made weight. If he wins, he will be the new welterweight champ.
“When I started off my MMA career, my first goal was always to be a world champion and then second right behind it was to become a world champion in a second division,” Lee told MMA Junkie Radio. “I always wanted to win two. So when the opportunity presented itself to fight for a second world title, to fight for the welterweight belt, it was too good of an opportunity to pass up, so I’m very excited to have this opportunity.”
Although Lee was a title challenger at featherweight, he won’t change too much in his move up to welterweight. It’s a relatively quick turnaround – especially moving up a weight class.
But Lee said it’s not about size.
“I’m just taking the same mindset, the same approach I took in my first fight at lightweight,” Lee said. “When I moved up from featherweight to lightweight it was also straight away for the title and in that fight, I wasn’t so much focused on my weight. I wasn’t focused on being a big guy in the lightweight division. My main focus was on keeping my speed – of course allowing myself to naturally float up to the weight class limit,
“But just trying to be faster than ever, stronger than ever, continuing to work on my cardio so that I was able to have a good gas tank, and that’s the same thing (I did) for this fight camp. I’m not worried about being a bigger guy or about being a smaller guy. I’m just training as hard as I can. … I think the key to this fight for me is going to be the preparation. It’s not going to come down to who’s heavier or lighter there.”
ONE on Prime Video 4 streams entirely on Amazon Prime, starting with prelims at 8 p.m. ET and the main card at 10 p.m. ET.