ONE: Christian Lee set to return in February for title defence

But 25-year-old Christian Lee, who holds the Asia-based martial arts promotion’s lightweight and welterweight MMA titles, has no intentions of hanging up his gloves.

“I spoke to Christian a couple of weeks ago to see how he’s doing and he gave me the green light,” Chatri said. “He said, ‘I’m ready to go, Chatri, tell me when’. The team and I talked about it, so February is when Christian will come back.

“It will be a title defence. It’s going to be a nice card, so we’re trying to figure it out. It’s been narrowed down to three opponents who are all worthy of a title shot, it’s just going to come down to which athlete we think is right to go for gold.”

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The organisation is set to return to its home city at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on February 17 for ONE Fight Night 19, with Lee seemingly earmarked for the main event.

The Canadian-born American (17-4), whose father is Chinese-Singaporean, won both of his titles at the same arena, claiming the welterweight belt from Kiamrian Abbasov in November 2022 in his most recent outing.

“i’m very excited, I genuinely believe that he is the best lightweight on the planet. His skill set is just crazy. He started in ONE Championship at 17 so he’s still very young and he is developing,” added Chatri.

“He’s just had another child, Tommy, after his first daughter Alia. A lot has happened this year for Christian in addition to him having to heal and mourn the loss of Victoria.

“He is very fired up. He’s been training for the last few months, he says he’s in his best form ever.”

“There have been some fighters [in the division] who are refusing to fight,” Chatri said. “They are holding out and Christian obviously has taken time off because of his sister’s passing.

“So there were a lot of things. It was like, ‘Look, let’s reshuffle the deck’.”

Before the lightweight rankings were removed, former champion Ok Rae-yoon (17-4) was still No 1 in the division.

But a trilogy against Lee is unlikely to happen, given the decisive way Lee reclaimed his belt in August 2022 with a second-round TKO. The South Korean took it from him in September 2021 in a controversial decision win.

Lee has also already defeated formerly No 2-ranked Saygid “Dagi” Arslanaliev (9-2), securing a decision in the final of the lightweight grand prix in Tokyo in October 2019.

Russia’s Saygid Izagakhmaev (22-2) – a protégé of UFC legend Khabib Nurmagomedov – and Turkey’s Halil Amir (10-0), who previously occupied the No 3 and No 4 spots in the rankings respectively, would offer fresh challenges to Lee.