Angela Lee, who is currently the ONE atomweight world champion and a MMA fighter, has disclosed that her car crash in 2017, where her vehicle flipped over approximately six times, was not an accident but a deliberate suicide attempt. This revelation comes after her earlier statement that she had ‘dozed off’ behind the wheel.
At 27 years old, Lee shared her mental health struggles and the dark period when she contemplated ending her life just days before a scheduled fight, in a poignant essay published online.
She recounted the challenging weight cut she was undergoing six years ago, realizing that her body was resisting and feeling like she had run out of time, ultimately leading to her feeling “broken”.
In an article on The Players’ Tribune, Lee wrote, “‘My car crash in November 2017 was not an accident. It was a suicide attempt.’ She detailed the mounting pressure, stress, and expectations she experienced as she prepared for her last title defense of the year. She admitted that at that time, she had everything she could have wanted but failed to fully appreciate it due to the overwhelming focus on making weight for the upcoming fight.
Lee reflected on her intense determination to the point where she believed that failing to make the fight would result in losing everything, causing a shameful outcome. She expressed her fear of missing a competition for the first time in her life, which pushed her to a point where she felt that it had become all-consuming and preferred to remove herself from the situation entirely.
As she had lost 12 pounds, Lee confessed to attempting self-harm to prevent the fight. Initially, she tried to break her own arm and then planned to give herself a concussion, neither of which worked. This led her to a late-night drive near her home in Waipahu, Hawaii, with the intention of taking her own life.
“I just pressed my foot all the way down on the gas pedal. As far down as it would go,” Lee recalled. “I don’t know how fast I was going. But it was as fast as my car could move. I wanted to hit the guardrail as hard as I could, and I just remember turning the steering wheel and swerving then hitting something, and then it was just… rolling. Rolling and rolling and rolling.
When I opened my eyes, I was upside down. There was shattered glass everywhere. I remember waiting around in that car for a bit of time, hanging upside down, just basically trying to process everything. Like…. Am I still here? Am I still alive?”
In the months and years following her car crash, Lee confided that only her husband was aware of the true nature of the incident.
ncG1vNJzZmimlazAr7vWp6CgnaKerm%2B6xmiYp5%2BVoa5uuMSeZKmqn5uytL%2FIqKWapF2iuqJ5xaKeoayVp3q0tMCrnKxlpJ2utXnHnqlmamBmhG6vwKtknKqRqLVutc2vpqWumaO0brnUpauiqJyaeqe4yKmqZq%2BRqHqiedKuoJyhlJp6osDTnqSprF8%3D