Looking at what martial arts Angela Lee uses in MMA

Angela Lee is an atomweight ONE FC Champion and is known for her exciting fighting style. Primarily a grappler, she is known for putting on a show and likes to win by submitting her opponents. However, like most modern-day MMA fighters, she is also well-rounded and is also competent whilst striking on her feet. Interestingly, Lee is also one of few women to have given birth whilst still holding a belt in an MMA promotion.

This article will go into detail about the strengths of Angela Lee’s martial arts. Hopefully, it will give an insight into what it takes to be an MMA champion and just how skilled some of these fighters really are.

What martial arts does Angela Lee use?

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

Judging by the number of submission victories that Lee gets inside the cage, it’s fair to say that she knows a lot about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. In fact, you could claim that this is her biggest strength as she is also a black belt in the art. In ONE, all of her submission victories have come by chokes (most being from the back) bar an armbar on her debut. Statistically, most of her wins come by submissions which is pretty telling.

What’s more, Lee’s husband is also a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt who is called Bruno Pucci. He also had an MMA career and fought in ONE for a while. However, he was pretty good at competitive BJJ as well and even competed in the gi. Further still, her father Ken is also a black belt in the art which will have been priceless growing up. This will have helped Lee during training with another high level competitor whilst sparring.

Like most modern-day BJJ fighters, Lee likes to take her opponents down by grappling and then use heavy top pressure to advance her position. Whilst on top, she slowly improves until she gets into an attacking pin, which usually leads to a submission or some kind of ground and pound. In other words, if you’re fighting her then your ground escapes must be on point, otherwise there’s a very high chance that you’ll get submitted.

Taekwondo

A lesser known fact about Angela Lee is that she’s also got a black belt in Taekwondo. This may be due to her heritage – as it turns out that she’s part Korean. And, it’s no coincidence that TKD is a Korean martial art – so this may have something to do with her education in the discipline.

Whilst fighting, Lee sometimes uses her kicks to hurt her opponents. For the most part though, these kicks are used as feints to check and kick her opponents, only to then combine them with takedowns. In other words, it’s a pretty smart way of fighting that has been used successfully before. UFC Champion Georges St Pierre refers to this method as ‘shootboxing’, where he combined Karate strikes to enter takedowns safely.

Wrestling

Another fighting style that Angela Lee is very good at is wrestling. Here, she won a folkstyle gold medal as a youth whilst living in Hawaii which shows that she’s always been solid at wrestling and is well versed when it comes to stand up grappling. This makes sense considering she can be pretty reliant on her BJJ too. Think about it this way, if she couldn’t take her opponents down then she may struggle to implement her BJJ which would be a shame.

So, it’s a good job that she can put her wrestling takedowns to good use. Another real benefit of wrestling is the ability to push through the cardio barrier. It’s no secret that wrestling really works your cardio – which is useful when doing championship fights and going to the fifth round. Not just in grappling but for striking too, this is an important part of any MMA fighters game.

Pankration

During her younger years in 2012, Angela Lee was also a Pankration world champion. This is one of the world’s oldest martial arts that was practiced by the ancient Greeks and is basically a modified version of MMA. Over the years, there have been many MMA champions that started out doing Pankration. Even the likes of Khabib Nurmagomedov were a Pankration champion before making the switch to MMA.

The reason for this is due to the amount of crossover. Put simply, if you’re good enough to do Pankration well, then you’re good enough to have a career in MMA. So, like many others – a younger Angela Lee used Pankration as a test to show her earlier skills. Judging by her medal haul and MMA career, it looks like she passed this test with ease and proved herself as a solid fighter.

Conclusion

As seen by the above disciplines, Angela Lee is a very skilled fighter. It’s no wonder either, considering she started training martial arts at a very young age. By the time she reached MMA, she was already highly technical and knew her stuff which is perhaps why she makes it look so easy.

Glancing at her fighting style, you could claim that she’s at her strongest whilst grappling and this is probably true. Of course, having a Taekwondo black belt doesn’t hurt either. However, if you were to look at one weakness it would probably be her boxing. Obviously, Lee is a solid boxer and is no slouch, but compared to her grappling it’s not quite as elite.

Overall, Angela Lee has the profile of a top MMA fighter. Becoming a champion in a promotion such as ONE proves this and her record speaks for herself. Coming from the illustrious Lee family with similarly skilled siblings, this should not come as a shock to anyone and is proof that if you work hard from a young age, you can become one of the best in the world.