Victoria Lee may have just recently finished high school but she’s already put the mixed martial arts world on notice.
The 18-year-old showed flashes of her brilliance, racking up three straight wins to kickstart her professional career, a tenure she has spent entirely with ONE Championship.
Debuting in February 2021 as a 16-year-old, Lee became headline news when she became the youngest fighter to sign for a major martial arts organization. While her age became the beacon of news, it was her in-ring capabilities that showed she’s no one to mess with.
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Lee proved that she is a force inside the circle, scoring three finishes against Sunisa Srisen, Wang Luping, and Victoria Souza. ‘The Prodigy’ is as true a personification of her nickname, and she’s just getting started.
With that said, here are three reasons why Lee could be the next big superstar in ONE Championship.
#3. She comes from the famed Lee family of ONE Championship
Children usually emulate what their older siblings and parents do in life, that’s just the natural way of things. For Victoria Lee, that was getting into martial arts.
The young fighter is part of the famed Lee family that produced MMA world champions Angela and Christian Lee. Her younger brother Adrian is yet to make the jump to ONE Championship, but the youngest of the siblings is already an accomplished fighter in the regional scene.
Angela is the first and still the reigning ONE women’s atomweight world champion, while Christian once held the ONE lightweight world championship and is the ONE Lightweight World Grand Prix Champion.
With training partners such as her siblings on the ready every single day, there’s no doubt that Lee could surpass her potential in no time at all.
Lee knows that it’s not enough to have a storied bloodline, and she’s already putting in the work to one day reach the heights her older siblings reached before.
#2. Victoria Lee has the potential to be bigger and stronger than Angela Lee
Victoria Lee is only at the earliest stage of her MMA career, yet she’s showing flashes that she could be even stronger than her older sister Angela.
At 18 years old, Lee still has a lot of time to grow into her body and it’s even possible that she could move up to strawweight later in her career.
Nevertheless, Lee has proven that she can dominate at atomweight even though she’s still growing both physically and mentally.
Even though she’s still a teenager, Lee displayed a mean streak and an intimidating wrestling game that allowed her to dominate her opponents inside the circle.
If her older sister Angela is the precedent, then Lee could very well make a move to strawweight. Angela fought twice at strawweight, with one of those matches a world title challenge against ONE women’s strawweight world champion Xiong Jing Nan.
#1. A massive audience with ONE Championship’s new deal with Amazon Prime
While her siblings Angela and Christian enjoyed worldwide audiences during their starts in ONE Championship, Victoria Lee could reach worldwide acclaim faster than both of them.
Lee’s star is quickly growing and that could reach supernova levels when she features in ONE Championship’s events on Amazon Prime Video.
The two industry giants recently signed a multi-year deal that would not only show ONE Championship fight cards on United States prime time, but also events staged on the US mainland.
With the way things are going, Victoria has the foundation to become one of the organization’s main figures in the North American audience.