By detailing the mental health struggles that she has gone through in her career, Angela Lee has done a lot of reflecting on her career.
Back in 2017, the ONE atomweight world champion's battles outside of the circle really started to affect her life.
Around that time, from the outside looking in, she was on top of the world as the first female world champion in the promotion with multiple title defenses under her belt.
In her interviews and Players’ Tribune essay, Lee speaks about the pressure of being a champion in terms of making weight and putting so much emphasis on this aspect of her life.
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In an interview with Daniel Cormier for ESPN MMA, Angela Lee spoke about how the weight of expectations negatively impacted her career and personal life despite her ability to rise to the occasion:
“Yeah, in 2017 I had everything I wanted in life um I had my world championship title, defended it multiple times, I met my husband, and I was engaged. It was weird and I try to look back on it and try to understand you know um, break it down and really try to see, you know, everything that led up to that moment and why and it's just such a strange thing because everything was going good in my life on the outside, but inside I think just the pressure and the stress and the feeling of I gotta stay on top of everything, on the top of the world.”
“I needed to stay there and I always thought that I was someone who does extremely well under pressure. I always told myself that before every single one of my fights. I'd tell myself that again, just to reassure myself before I stepped in the cage. But I think, you know, you can only go so far and you can only go so long telling yourself that before you have to really take a step back and deal with everything that's going inside [my brain].”
Watch the full interview below:
If you have suicidal thoughts or know someone who is experiencing them, help is available. In the US, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. For a list of other nations’ helplines, see this page.
