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Herb Dean has been officiating fights for ONE Championship for a few cards now, but what he saw in the trilogy bout between heated rivals Xiong Jing Nan and Angela Lee was what made the referee a firm believer in the promotion.
The veteran official was the third man inside the cage when Xiong retained the ONE women’s strawweight world title against Lee in the main event of ONE on Prime Video 2 this past September at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.
In an interview with ONE Championship, Herb Dean expressed how he was mightily impressed with both Xiong and Lee for slugging it out for the whole five rounds:
“The Xiong versus Lee fight was great. It went all five rounds, the ability to stay focused and keep a game plan after weathering the storm was great. But nothing surprised me. I came here expecting to see high-level top-notch talent, that’s what I’ve seen from ONE so far.”
Xiong and Lee, the reigning ONE women’s atomweight world champion, are two of the best female fighters in ONE Championship. Though they compete primarily in different weight classes, the two have been embroiled in arguably the greatest rivalry in the organization’s history.
That feud reached its crescendo in their trilogy bout, which marked the second time Xiong defended her strawweight strap. While the first two matches saw fifth-round finishes, the third match between the two was an all-out brawl.
Xiong, one of the hardest hitters in ONE Championship, nearly had Lee finished in the first round when she tagged the atomweight queen with some hellacious punch combinations.
Lee, however, managed to hang on and became the aggressor in the final two rounds.
The match ultimately ended in a unanimous decision win for Xiong but it was still seen as a controversial outcome as some fans viewed Lee should’ve won the bout for what she did in the latter stages.
Catch the full interview below:
Herb Dean hyped for ONE Championship’s push of submission grappling
Before he became a full-time referee, Herb Dean took up mixed martial arts as a career, but his time as a competitor was brief.
Nevertheless, the 52-year-old still trains extensively, especially in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
A student of submission grappling, Herb Dean couldn’t help but applaud ONE Championship for its aggressive push of the sport. In the same interview, he said:
“I also really like the fact that they’re pushing submission wrestling and giving these guys a home because that’s something near and dear to me. I think that’s something that everyone can do as a sport. You know, your kids can do it, everyone can do it, so I’d like to see that sport being promoted and that’s a really cool thing.”
Before he officiated the trilogy bout between Xiong and Lee, Dean was cage-side to witness Mikey Musumeci’s historic unanimous win over Cleber Sousa for the inaugural ONE flyweight submission grappling world title.
