“You definitely can’t pour from an empty cup” – Angela Lee says self-improvement key before helping others

At ONE Fight Night 14, Angela Lee left the Singapore Indoor Stadium stunned with her announcement before the main event got underway.

Making her way to the circle, 'Unstoppable' laid her ONE atomweight world champion down on the floor and announced her retirement from MMA.

Having revealed the personal battles and struggles that she has gone through in her career, Lee has changed her focus from competing to using her experiences to try and help others.

Following the tragic passing of her younger sister Victoria at the end of last year, Lee set-up a non profit organization, Fightstory.

With the goal of helping others by giving them somewhere they can go to not feel alone and share their experiences, the former world champion has been very open about how difficult this process has been.

Though she is happy to be in a position where she can use her platform to help others, it has been a balancing act of listening to other people’s struggles while going through her own.

In an interview with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Angela Lee spoke about why she must put her own health before she can be in a position to support and help others on a similar journey.

She said:

“It has been difficult to try to keep my own mental health in check while doing this, while going through the messages and connecting with people but, you know, it's something that I'm learning that you definitely can't pour from an empty cup, and if I want to do good I want to make sure that I got to make sure that I'm I've taken care of myself first so that I can go out there and continue this mission.”

Watch the full interview below:

ONE Fight Night 14 is available to watch back in full via the free event replay on Amazon Prime Video for North Americans with an active subscription.