ONE Championship 42 results: Angela Lee captures gold over Mei Yamaguchi in instant classic

The first women’s title fight in ONE Championship history turned out to be an instant classic. In a frenetic battle that featured a buffet of scrambles and wild submission attempts, 19-year-old Angela Lee took everything Mei Yamaguchi had and kept on coming to capture the inaugural ONE atomweight strap with a unanimous decision victory over the Japanese veteran in the main event of ONE Championship 42 at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on Friday night.

Lee (6-0) is one of ONE‘s brightest prospects, but Yamaguchi (15-9) has been in the fight game for over a decade and she was up for the test, taking the early advantage by driving Lee to the ground with a quick single leg. But Lee is a player on the ground, and she wasted little time sweeping into the mount position, then snatching a guillotine that tied up Yamaguchi for much of the opening round. Lee went back to work in the second, hunting for a pair of armbars before finding trouble from a Yamaguchi guillotine as the bell sounded.

Then the already frantic pace slipped into overdrive, as Lee and Yamaguchi traded endless submission attempts in one of the best rounds of 2016.

Yamaguchi kicked things off by flooring Lee in the opening seconds with a heavy overhand right, but Lee kept her composure and worked towards an armbar, then a rear-naked choke. Yamaguchi escaped both submissions and fought back with her own armbar attempt, then rolled for a kneebar, but Lee defended and caught Yamaguchi in a front headlock in the ensuing scramble. Lee smashed a few knees onto the head of Yamaguchi then rolled for a d’arce choke, but once again Yamaguchi toughed it out to survive the round.

From there Lee took control, catching …

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