By:  | October 10, 2022 12:45 am

Tiffany Teo made a successful start to life in the atomweight division at ONE on Prime Video 2. She submitted Ritu Phogat in the opening round and has been rewarded with a spot in the top five.

The Singaporean already has her sights set on the champion and says she plans to continue competing in the atomweight division in order to secure it,

“Now I’m leaning towards a fight at atomweight because I really want to fight Angela next.”

No sympathy

Lee was upset about the scoring after her decision loss to Xiong Jing Nan but the Teo has absolutely no sympathy,

“I feel like she’s a sore loser, right? I feel like under the ONE Championship ruleset for sure she didn’t win the belt. And also, you can’t just cry over it just because you lost. It’s double standards because when Denice (Zamboanga) lost, she was like, ‘Don’t leave it to the hands of the judges’.”

Phogat reached the final of the atomweight Grand Prix earlier this year. But Teo says the Indian caught her by surprise after fulfilling her promise to make it a striking match,

“She did what I expected. I knew that she likes to go for the single-leg, and then she likes to drive you to the cage to finish her takedown. I watched all of her fights, and that’s kind of what she did for all them. So, I wasn’t surprised that she did that but I was surprised that she was really trying to strike with me.”

 

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Calm and composed

Teo remained calm and composed and eventually Phogat reverted back to the strategy which has served her so well in her MMA career so far,

“I read some interviews where she said she will try to knock me out, and she really did try to strike with me. I was like, ‘she’s trying to stand and bang for a bit’. But I think wrestling was just her comfort zone so, when she realized that she couldn’t really implement her game plan on the stand-up, she went to whatever she was comfortable with.”

Teo was the #1 contender at strawweight but has been removed from the rankings after dropping down a division. She admits to have been hoping Lee would beat Xiong.

 

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Best case

That would have given her the opportunity to challenge Lee for the strawweight belt which was exactly what Teo had in mind,

“The best case scenario for me was if Angela won (because) if I’m the top contender in strawweight then it makes sense for that match to happen. I was at the stadium, I was ready to call her out if that happened.”

In the past Lee has been the beneficiary of some generous decisions from the ONE Championship judges even if they didn’t see things her way last month. Teo is conscious of this and thinks she would need to finish the fight if she ever faced the current atomweight queen,

“It might be a bit controversial if it reaches the judges’ scorecards, so in a fight with Angela, I definitely need a finish to not let the judges decide.”