Tye Ruotolo is now officially 1-0 in MMA after his successful debut against Adrian Lee at ONE Fight Night 35 on September 5th, 2025. He now joins his brother Kade Ruotolo as an undefeated professional MMA fighter and he looked incredible in his first outing, especially because he was up against another top prospect. Lee comes from a family of elite fighters, with his three siblings all holding ONE Championship world titles at different points during their careers. He was coming into the fight with a 3-0 record and 3 submission finishes too, so it looked like it would be a very tough test when the fight was first announced.
Ruotolo passed the test with flying colours though, putting on a dominant performance right from the start. There were several positive takeaways for Ruotolo but perhaps the biggest was just how crisp and clean his striking looked against an experienced fighter. He’s been working on his striking for several years and has been able to train alongside some of the best in the world; and it’s clearly paid off. He was able to win a lot of the striking exchanges against Lee, but it was his world-class grappling and dynamic style that actually got him the finish and the $50,000 ‘Performance of the Night’ bonus.
Ruotolo took Lee down and landed ground and pound, fighting through submission attempts to pass his guard and continue landing strikes in mount to win the first round convincingly, but he would have to wait until the second to finish him. He scored another takedown in the second and almost caught Lee with an armbar during a transition, but Lee escaped and got to his feet. Ruotolo followed him and launched into a standing back-take though, followed by quickly locking up the rear-naked choke. Lee refused to tap and worked until the end, but ultimately it was far too tight and Ruotolo put him to sleep.
The highlights of Tye Ruotolo winning his MMA debut against Adrian Lee at ONE Fight Night 35 was uploaded to the promotion’s official YouTube channel:
