“It’s like a puzzle” – Former ONE world champion Angela Lee explains her love affair with jiu-jitsu

Throughout her reign as the ONE atomweight world champion, the grappling of Angela Lee set her out as one of the best in the world.

Eight of her eleven wins as a pro were capped off with a submission finish including three of her atomweight title defenses.

Despite stepping away from MMA due to her retirement, Lee still finds herself captivated with training and learning Jiu-Jitsu because of the endless puzzles and solutions it provides.

She explained to the Keep it Aloha podcast during a recent interview exactly why she finds so much joy in grappling:

“For me, I've always loved jiu-jitsu and grappling on the ground because it's like a puzzle. It's like a chess match and you really think a lot, you know? And you're like okay I want to do this, how do I get to that, if I need to do this and this. Or if he reacts like this then I need to do this to get to this. So yeah, there’s so many different steps and just like thinking patterns involved. But then also being able to like react is super important in grappling.”

Watch the full podcast appearance below:

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Angela Lee would be proud of the level of grappling on show in ONE Championship

ONE Championship calls itself the home of martial arts but for some time, elite grapplers like Angela Lee were a bit more rare to find in the promotion.

There were always elite mixed martial artists and strikers from kickboxing and Muay Thai but submission grappling has become the newest string in the promotion’s bow.

With four world champions, ONE has some of the best grapplers in the world in the family with Mikey Musumeci, Danielle Kelly, and the Ruotolo brothers all at the top of their games.

Grappling is now an integral part of the ONE Championship experience and that’s something that Lee must be able to look back at with a sense of pride following her incredible run in MMA.