Tye Ruotolo is now a two-sport ONE champion. The reigning ONE Welterweight Submission Grappling World Champion submitted Christian Lee with a first-round rear-naked choke at The Inner Circle 37 on Friday, November 6, taking the ONE Lightweight MMA World Championship in only his third mixed martial arts appearance. The fight took place at Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand, and according to ONE, Ruotolo is the first athlete to hold submission grappling and MMA gold at the same time.
The part that should worry the rest of the division is how he got there. Ruotolo didn’t shoot from the opening bell or pull guard and hope. He stood in front of Lee, dropped him with a clean one-two, and followed him to the mat with ground-and-pound. Once Lee was hurt and scrambling, Ruotolo took the back and finished with the choke he’s been hitting for most of his life.
He told onefc.com that the camp was built around exactly that sequence. “I knew my grappling was better, so it was a lot of striking for the camp,” Ruotolo said. “I didn’t focus too much on my grappling because I knew I’d be able to submit him there. I just wanted to make sure I could rock him and get the fight to where I needed to go.”
Bad blood between two families
This one had history. Ruotolo previously choked out Lee’s younger brother, Adrian Lee, and the Singaporean-American champion came in looking for payback. The two traded words on the way in, and Ruotolo admitted the talking pulled both of them off their plans for a moment. “Eventually I started locking back in,” he said. “After I gave him one good jab, I started to feel good.”
Lee entered as the winningest fighter in the promotion and the most prolific finisher in ONE MMA history. Ruotolo, a California native who trains out of Roots of Jiu-Jitsu, walked away from him essentially untouched. “Nothing shook me. No little leg kicks. Nothing crazy. Nothing hurt,” he said.
Ruotolo, the youngest IBJJF World Champion, is now 12-0 in ONE. He’s less than a year into his MMA run.
What’s next
Ruotolo said he intends to defend both belts as often as he can stay healthy, and he left the choice of which comes first to the promotion and the fans. “Whichever one you guys want [me to defend], let me know. Anything you guys want,” he said. He also floated a Muay Thai fight someday, though he conceded that doing everything right now is a stretch. No opponent or date has been announced for either title.
My take: grappling specialists usually lose MMA fights in the first 30 seconds of a bad shot, when they get sprawled on and eat knees. Ruotolo removed that problem by making Lee respect the hands first. A specialist forcing his specialty would have shot in blind. This was a fighter who correctly diagnosed that his opponent had to stand with him, then cashed in the moment Lee hit the canvas. If his next opponent at lightweight has to worry about the one-two before the back take, I’d want to know who in that division has an answer for both. I don’t see one yet.
