Danielle Kelly and Jessa Khan are about to make history at ONE Fight Night 14 on September 29th, 2023, as they will be competing for the promotion’s first ever female submission grappling title. While ONE Championship have been hard at work developing their grappling divisions in recent years, this marks the biggest opportunity they’ve given to female grapplers to date. It actually forms part of a fantastic card that will celebrate women in combat sports, as 3 women’s titles across 3 different disciplines are going to be on the line in the final fights of the night.
This match will actually be the first time that Jessa Khan has competed for ONE Championship despite initially signing her contract with the promotion over a year ago, while Danielle Kelly has plenty of experience competing for the promotion. Kelly currently holds a 2-0-1 ONE Championship record that started with a draw against Mei Yamaguchi in the very first female grappling match that the promotion staged at ONE X. It seems fitting then that Kelly is able to continue making history for ONE Championship by competing for the first female title as well, particularly as she’s been so successful since then.
Kelly submitted Mariia Molchanova at ONE on Prime Video 4 at the beginning of the year before making an incredibly quick turnaround just a month later, winning a decision against Ayaka Miura at ONE on Prime Video 7. It’s a great move to crown an atomweight submission grappling champion and there aren’t many women who’d be better suited to compete for the belt than Kelly and Khan. Not only that, but the two have met on the mats before as well. Khan won a decision at Who’s Number One 6 back in 2021 and it’ll be interesting to see what changes both women will make this time around.
ONE Championship announced the news that Danielle Kelly and Jessa Khan would be competing for the inaugural women’s atomweight submission grappling championship at ONE Fight Night 14 in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
