“I made that great champion” - Shinya Aoki has no regrets about calling out Christian Lee in 2019

Japanese MMA legend Shinya Aoki has no regrets about calling out Christian Lee for a relatively short-notice fight that cost him the ONE lightweight world championship.

Fresh off winning the division’s crown against Eduard Folayang in April 2019, ‘Tobikan Judan’ challenged Lee to step up from the featherweight division to fight him. Less than two months later, Aoki got his wish and defended his crown against ‘The Warrior’ at ONE: Enter the Dragon in Singapore.

Intent on showing the world that he was more than capable of hanging with the next generation of ONE talent, Shinya Aoki was dealt a devastating loss via second-round knockout. The result gave way to a new era in the lightweight division.

Despite the shocking loss and the less-than-desirable circumstances, Aoki has zero regrets about how things went down that night more than three years ago. He told ONE:

“I was the champion at the moment, and I felt strong. I really wanted to fight against a strong and young fighter - I won’t escape from those young lions. At the age of 35, my mind was like, 'You want to compete with youngsters or ignore [them] and live your life?' I wanted to crash with youngers. It was a quick turnaround, I only had one and a half months until that fight.”

Aoki continued:

“There’s no regret because I was able to showcase what I wanted to tell fans, what I wanted to do, what I’ve been doing. In fact, because of that fight, we made such a great world champion. I made that great champion, Christian Lee is an iconic champion at ONE.”

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Christian Lee goes for two-division glory at ONE on Prime Video 4

After reclaiming the ONE lightweight world championship following a controversial loss a year prior, Christian Lee is ready to make history as a two-division world champion. He'll have the chance to do so when he meets welterweight titleholder Kiamrian Abbasov in the ONE on Prime Video 4 main event.

Christian Lee’s sister, reigning atomweight queen Angela Lee, came up short in her bid to become a dual-champion at ONE on Prime Video 2 last month against ONE women’s strawweight world champion Xiong Jing Nan. ‘The Warrior’ will give the Lee family one more shot at bringing another piece of gold home to Hawaii when he steps into the U.S. primetime spotlight on November 18

In an interview with SCMP MMA, Lee said:

“For me, I’m always open to new challenges and I think that Kiamrian Abbasov would absolutely be the toughest fight of my career and I would love to test myself that way.”