"I wish I could have protected her" - Angela Lee says she treated late sister Victoria like a daughter

The final days of 2022 were incredibly testing for Angela Lee and the rest of her family after they received some tragic news.

They have always been a close-knit family unit, so losing one of their beloved siblings was never going to be easy to recover from. Angela's younger sister took her own life, but her memory will live on through their family.

The former ONE atomweight MMA world champion spoke about what this was like to go through in detail when speaking up about her own struggles with mental health, where she felt overwhelming pressure to deliver.

Having also tried to take her own life many years ago, Angela took Victoria's passing especially hard because she knows what she must have been going through.

During a recent interview with ONE flyweight world champion Demetrious Johnson on an episode of MightyCast, she spoke about how the age difference between the two sisters meant that Angela treated her younger sister as a daughter to some degree:

"I wish I could have protected her, or that things could have been different. And you know, we're eight years apart. So for me, I was a big sister to her. But also, I looked at her like my daughter."

Watch the full podcast interview below:

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Angela Lee is working to find the positives

Angela Lee and her family have come out the other side of a very difficult and dark period, and now they're looking to honor their younger sister.

The former atomweight MMA champion made the decision at ONE Fight Night 14 to relinquish her title and walk away from MMA altogether.

Instead, her main focus is now on being the best mother, wife, sister, and role model imaginable.

Her experiences and battles with mental health have made her stronger as a result and now she hopes to help guide others through similar moments in life.