“I had a lot of time spent with my wife and daughter” - Christian Lee chooses to look on the bright side of 2021

It may have taken nearly a full year, but Christian Lee had the opportunity to recapture the ONE lightweight world championship at ONE 160 on August 26th. Rematching the man who took the title in a controversial fashion in September 2021, Lee had no intentions of letting his long-awaited opportunity get away.

In the end, it only took ‘The Warrior’ six minutes to score a dominant knockout victory over Ok Rae Yoon to once again be the king of the lightweight division. It was a statement performance for Lee, who patiently waited for his opportunity to avenge the highly-disputed decision that took his title away at ONE: Revolution.

Fortunately, Lee was able to enjoy some time away from the ONE circle by spending most of it with his wife and daughter. Speaking to South China Morning Post, Christian Lee discussed how he made the most of the year between losing and regaining the ONE world title.

“For me, the last year wasn’t too tough, it was [more like] unfortunate. I was really upset about the initial decision on how the fight went but other than that, my life was going great. I had a lot of time spent with my wife and daughter, and I was still in the gym training hard every day.”

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Christian Lee says the hard work he put in over the last year paid off at ONE 160

With the loss to Ok Rae Yoon in 2021 still gnawing at him, Christian Lee refused to let it affect his training. Continuing his conversation with SCMP, ‘The Warrior’ said that he just kept moving forward with the goal of getting back his world title when the time was right.

“So, you know I knew that I had lost the title, I felt like I didn’t lose the fight, but that didn’t stop me from training. That didn’t change my mindset on how I approached my training so I just put my head down and kept working. I knew that the result would be different once we faced [each other] in the circle again.”

Asked how it feels to once again be the promotion’s lightweight world champion, Lee said:

“It feels good, a lot of hard work went into training for that last fight and I’m glad the hard work paid off and I was able to get my belt back.”