Angela Lee has spoken out following her unanimous decision loss to Xiong Jing Nan at ONE on Prime Video 2 last night. She finished the fight strongly but could not do enough to mount a comeback on the scorecards after being totally dominated in the opening round.
After the fight Lee celebrated like she thought she had won. The ONE Championship CEO, Chatri Sityodtong, also felt the same way but all three judges scored the fight in favour of Xiong.
The controversy was cause by the Chinese fighter’s lack of urgency in the final four rounds. Having done a lot of damage to Lee in the first five minutes and come close to finishing the fight she took her foot of the gas.
By contrast Lee rallied and kept coming forwards even if she didn’t do much damage in the process. The reigning atomweight champion made it clear in her Facebook post that she believes she should have won the fight:
Scoring and ruleset
In the aftermath of the loss she has called on ONE Championship to change the scoring and ruleset,
“I would like to call on ONE Championship to see if they would be open for a clarification and improvement of their ruleset. I love the global ruleset that ONE abides by however, I do believe that it leaves the judging too vague and often leads to very questionable decisions.”
Lee was also extremely critical of the scoring in her younger brother’s split decision loss to Ok Rae Yoon. She believes Christian Lee ‘clearly won’ that fight and was critical of the judges in another Facebook post.
She is not in favour of ONE Championship adopting UFC style scoring but would like to see the promotion judging fights round by round instead of as a whole. Lee explains as follows,
“I think that the ten-point must system that is used in North America is clearer but also, fighters can end up just playing to win rounds. I would like to see our global ruleset being applied and judged, round by round and then tallied up as a whole.”
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Debatable decision
It was not the most controversial decision of the night. While most fans felt Xiong had done enough to beat Lee there was widespread astonishment when it was announced that Oh Ho Taek had beaten Ryogo Takahashi by split decision.
It was the second time in a row that the Japanese fighter had found himself on the wrong end of a split decision that was debatable at best, and downright wrong in the eyes of many.
Afterwards he protested in a very polite fashion on Instagram,
“I have a question about ONE’s judgment. I understand ONE’s criteria on how much damage is given to the opponent. I nearly finished my opponent without getting damaged. I should have won the fight and the previous fight as well.”
Fans will certainly have a lot of sympathy for Takahashi who is entitled to feel he has been hard done by. But whether Lee is successful in her quest to revamp the entire judging system after her loss remains to be seen.
