Danielle Kelly relishes opportunity in competing outside the U.S.

This holiday season, submission grappling star Danielle Kelly sat down with ONE Championship to share what she is thankful for as 2022 comes to a close.

The photogenic Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt made her promotional debut at the ONE X in March, delivering a showstopping performance against Japanese combat sports star Mei Yamaguchi. Pocketing a $50,000 bonus from the ONE CEO for her efforts, Kelly embraced the opportunity to travel the world, see new sights, and hone her craft with some of the best grapplers in the world:

“And I’m really thankful to meet a lot of different people, to train with a lot of different people. Getting to travel, even though it’s like 20-plus hours of like traveling there and back to the US that was new."

She added:

“It’s all about the experience so I’m really thankful for those.”

Kelly made her triumphant return to the circle in November, dispatching Sambo world champion Mariia Molchanova in just 2:15. Making quick work of her Russian opponent, Kelly already has her first match of 2023 lined up. At ONE on Prime Video 7, Kelly will face Ayaka ‘Zombie’ Miura, an 11-4 mixed martial artist with a 100% finish rate under the ONE Championship banner.

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Danielle Kelly hopes 2023 will bring ONE Championship gold

With ONE Championship going all-in on submission grappling in 2022, it was just a matter of time before the promotion introduced grappling world titles. They did exactly that in the fall, crowning the first-ever submission grappling champion in the flyweight division, Mikey Musumeci. Kade Ruotolo was next in line coming off his historic run at the 2022 ADCC World Championship in December.

Ruotolo captured the inaugural ONE lightweight submission grappling world title in October, defeating Sambo world champion Uali Kurzhev. Danielle Kelly hopes when the time comes that she has the opportunity to compete for the first women’s submission grappling world title. Speaking with the MMA Superfan, Kelly said such a world title would definitely be huge for the sport:

"I think it would be like the biggest platform, it would draw a lot of attention to women’s jiu-jitsu in the world."

With Danielle Kelly’s rising star power inside the circle, it’s just a matter of time before ONE presents her with the opportunity to compete for 26.4 pounds of gold. Whether or not that will happen in 2023 remains to be seen, but if Kelly continues her dominant run inside the circle, there is no way she can be denied.