ONE Championship has booked one of its most compelling title fights of the year, pitting two athletes from major martial arts lineages against each other…
As the reigning ONE Lightweight and Welterweight MMA World Champion Christian Lee will defend his lightweight belt against reigning ONE Welterweight Submission Grappling World Champion Tye Ruotolo, at The Inner Circle 37.
Ruotolo already holds the distinction of handing Christian’s younger brother, Adrian Lee, his first career loss, and now the 23-year-old grappling prodigy has a shot at defeating a second member of the Lee family, this time with a world title on the line.
Lee’s resume speaks for itself.
The 28-year-old Singaporean-American, who trains out of Prodigy Training Center, made his ONE debut in 2015 at just 17 and quickly established himself as a generational talent.
He won the ONE Lightweight MMA World Title for the first time in May 2019 with a come-from-behind win over Shinya Aoki, becoming the youngest male MMA world champion in ONE history, and has defended it successfully multiple times since.
His 18-4 record includes 17 wins by finish, 11 of them in the first round, with an average fight time of just 5:14, and he holds ONE’s records for most wins, most finishes, and most first-round finishes.
On the other side is Ruotolo, a 23-year-old Hawaiian-born competitor out of Tenore and the twin brother of reigning ONE Lightweight Submission Grappling World Champion Kade Ruotolo, who also remains undefeated in MMA.
Tye built his reputation as one of the most dangerous submission grapplers in the world before making the jump to MMA, where he immediately made a statement by submitting Adrian Lee in the second round via rear naked choke in his promotional debut.
Less than two and a half months later, he finished Shozo Isojima in under three minutes to move to 2-0 in MMA.
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