Preview: One Championship 'Beyond The Horizon'

Featherweights
Edward Kelly (10-5-0) vs Christian Lee (9-2-0)

The featherweight matchup between the Philippine’s Edward Kelly and Singapore’s Christian Lee is an opportunity for both fighters to keep their name in the upper tier of the ONE Championship featherweight division. Both men are coming off losses and a second straight defeat would make their climb back up to future title contention even longer. After losing via majority decision to Martin Nguyen in a featherweight championship clash back in May, Christian Lee’s return to the cage will be met with great interest by ONE Championship observers. At only 20 years of age, the Singaporean submission specialist is still years away from reaching his physical peak, and his recent performances indicate he is still developing as a fighter, despite already being one of the top featherweights in the promotion. Lee’s only losses have come at the hands of Nguyen¬–the current featherweight champion. In the pair’s second bout Lee demonstrated his evolution as a fighter from when the two first met in 2016 with a more composed, controlled performance despite the loss. As a six-time Pankration world champion, Lee’s grappling credentials were always apparent, but over the years he also developed an increasingly impressive stand-up game—five TKO wins and four submission wins are proof of his ability to stop a fight either via stand up or on the ground.

Kelly’s last bout was a somewhat one-sided loss to Mongolia’s Narantungalag Jadambaa. The former ONE featherweight champion outmuscled Kelly and dominated him on the ground. After gaining full mount towards the end of the second round, Jadambaa rained down blows on the Filipino forcing the referee to halt the contest. Kelly has all the hallmarks that people associate with and expect from Team Lakay. He is an aggressive, solid grappler, backed by an impressive arsenal of offensive stand-up manoeuvers, who is capable of beating the majority of fighters in the ONE featherweight division. However, when it comes to facing the division’s top dogs, he appears to be a step or two behind. At 34 years of age, time is running out for Kelly to put together a run at the featherweight title. Before Jadambaa his previous losses included defeats to Martin Nguyen, Ev Ting, and Emilio Urrutia, and after his bout, Kelly did acknowledge the gaps in his game. So we can expect to see this weekend how successful he has been in improving on those. The combination of two fighters both eager to put disappointing defeats behind them and both with the ability to explode into action if given the opportunity could result in this bout being the fight of the night.

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