Danielle Kelly will no longer be competing for ONE Championship and the news came as quite a surprise, as she was one of the first grapplers to sign with them. She actually made her promotional debut over three years ago and although that match was a draw, she won her next two matches and quickly became their most successful female grappler. Kelly then became the promotion’s first ever female grappling world champion by beating Jessa Khan, securing a place in ONE Championship history. The promotion was clearly putting a lot of effort into promoting her at this point and it seemed like they were eager to build a proper division around her.
According to Kelly though, they originally promised her a lot more than what they were offering at this point:
“The agreement was just competing a lot and having like four or five matches a year and then that’s kind of what I signed up for.“
That’s nowhere near the volume of matches that Kelly was actually having at this point and in fact, it took almost a year for her to make her first title-defense. In that match she was dethroned by Mayssa Bastos and in most cases she would have been working her way back up to a title-shot against other opponents. Instead she was booked in an immediate rematch with Bastos, and Kelly revealed that this was pushed on her:
“I was kind of like talked into taking the match because it was brought to me from the matchmaker, saying if I didn’t take the match, I wouldn’t know when the next time I was competing.”
Kelly lost that rematch with Bastos and it’s already about 8 months since that match took place, so naturally Kelly was eager to compete again. When it didn’t look like she was going to be able to do so, that’s when the idea of asking ONE Championship to release her came up:
“Unfortunately that’s kinda like what happened the last six, seven months until I kind of… Me and my team were just basically like ‘if there’s no matches being planned, should we just ask for a release?’ Because the agreement was just competing a lot and having like four or five matches a year and then that’s kinda what I signed up for, so I’m not dodging anyone.”
Danielle Kelly explained why she will no longer be competing for ONE Championship in a recent video uploaded to her official YouTube channel:
