nicholasbraman.com

Tag: identity

  • Angela Lee on Retiring from Fighting, Losing Her Sister, and Who She Became After

    Angela Lee on Retiring from Fighting, Losing Her Sister, and Who She Became After

    Intro

    Angela Lee spent almost her whole life as a fighter. She won a world title as a teenager, held it for years, and walked away from the sport in 2023, not long after losing her sister Victoria. What looked from the outside like a champion retiring on her own terms was, for her, the start of an identity crisis. Fighting was the only thing she had ever done and the only way she had ever made money, and without it she did not know who she was.

    In this episode we get into what came after. Speaking openly about her mental health and starting her nonprofit Fight Story, and how choosing that path left her feeling like the black sheep, with her world shrinking to her husband Bruno and their daughter Ava. How she learned to advocate for herself by treating it the way she would stand up for the people she loves. And how she found new people, at the gym and around the work, who became a second family. She is not looking for a way back to the cage. She is building a life on the other side of it.

    Story Highlights

    • Winning a world title as a teenager and building her entire identity around being a fighter, until she could not separate who she was from what she did.
    • The trap she describes at the top: once you are champion, you cannot lose, because losing means the title, the paycheck, and everything that comes with it, all at once.
    • The goalpost that kept moving, telling herself she would feel safe at 10 and 0, then 20 and 0, and never getting there.
    • Retiring in 2023 with no hesitation and no love left for the sport, then realizing fighting was the only way she knew how to make money.
    • The identity crisis after she laid the belt down, sitting up late asking herself what she was even good at other than fighting.
    • Losing her sister Victoria, and how it froze everything and made her ask what she was actually doing with her life.
    • Coming up in a fighting culture that shut her down when she tried to voice what she was going through, and why she is now adamant about building something safer.
    • Starting Fight Story, opening up about her own mental health for the first time, and becoming the black sheep for it.
    • Learning to advocate for herself by thinking of it as standing up for Victoria and for Ava.
    • Being let down by the people closest to her, and watching others step up to fill those spaces.
    • Writing United We Rise with Bruno, and what they want it to be for Ava.
    • The everyday fighter idea she is building her next chapter around, and finally being in a good season.

    Quote

    “I’m getting to introduce myself in a new way, as a person who, yes, has also won championships, but is now so much more than that.”

    About Angela Lee

    Angela Lee is a retired mixed martial artist and a six-time world champion who competed at atomweight before stepping away from the sport in 2023. She is the founder of Fight Story, a nonprofit focused on mental health in and around combat sports, and the co-author, with her husband Bruno Pucci, of United We Rise. She lives in Hawaii, where she trains and coaches, and is the mother of daughter Ava. These days she describes herself as an everyday fighter, carrying what the sport taught her into a life beyond it. Find her at @angelaleemma.

    Why This Conversation Matters

    Most people know how Angela’s fighting career went. The world title, the reign, the retirement. This conversation is the part that came after the cameras left. She talks about not knowing who she was once the fighting stopped, about the years of grief and rebuilding, and about the cost of speaking honestly when the people around you are not ready to hear it. It is not a comeback story. It is a person figuring out who she is when the thing she built her whole identity on is gone, and deciding to keep fighting for different things.

    Turning Points

    • Realizing after retirement that she had built her entire identity around being a fighter, and had no idea who she was without it.
    • Losing Victoria, and the moment everything else stopped mattering and she had to ask what kind of life she actually wanted.
    • Choosing to start Fight Story and speak openly about her mental health, knowing it would set her apart from the people closest to her.
    • Learning to stand up for herself by framing it as standing up for the people she loves, which she calls the beginning of finding her voice.

    Key Lessons

    • The hardest part of winning is what it does to losing. Once she was champion, every fight became something she could only lose, never win, and that pressure took the joy out of it.
    • Retiring is not the end of the crisis, it is the start of one. Walking away meant losing not just the sport but the identity, the income, and the structure built around it, all at once.
    • Speaking honestly has a cost, and it is worth paying anyway. Opening up about her mental health made her the black sheep, but she knew it mattered and did it regardless.
    • You can learn to advocate for yourself through the people you love. She could not stand up for herself directly, so she did it by imagining she was standing up for Victoria and Ava.
    • When some people fall away, others step in. The support she expected did not always come from where she thought, and the community she built became a second family.

    If You Enjoyed This Episode

    You might also like:

  • The Parts I Left Out

    The Parts I Left Out

    I used to hate answering the question “Where are you from?”. It sounds simple, but it never was for me.

    The answer is, “I’m from Seattle.” But that always led to follow-up questions. As an Asian in the US, people asked about my ethnicity or where my parents were from. In China and Singapore, people assumed I was an American-born Chinese. So I’d end up explaining that I was adopted by caucasian parents when I was 4 months old, but was actually born in Korea. Then the usual questions: “No, I don’t speak Korean.” “No, I haven’t found my birth parents.” “Yes, I call my adoptive parents mom and dad.”

    For a long time, I kept these conversations short. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of who I am; it’s just complicated, and it was easier to downplay or simplify things. Over the past year, though, I’ve started to embrace my identity instead of minimizing it. I’ve been surprised how much it has helped me grow and connect with people. I’ve realized that the surprising things about my background are part of what I’m made from. And sharing more openly doesn’t complicate things; it helps people understand more of who I am.

    And there are surprising things about me that people wouldn’t expect by looking at me. I grew up as suburban Americana as it gets: bologna sandwiches and RC cola, tuna casseroles and minivans. I was a die-hard NASCAR fan and never missed a race from around ’93 to after Dale Earnhardt died. I threw thousands of pitches against a board in the backyard, listening to Dave Niehaus call Mariners games on the radio. I had a mullet for most of my teen years, and my first concert was Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. But that didn’t seem easy to share, even with friends I’d had for years. I didn’t think much about it for years, but at some point, I realized this wasn’t just my experience; most people do some version of the same thing. We share a simpler, safer version of ourselves with the world in an effort to protect ourselves.

    When I stopped editing my story down to the safest version and started sharing more, interesting things started happening. People opened up to me, too. Someone I knew was also adopted. Someone else had lost a parent. Another person felt conflicted about their heritage. These conversations built deeper relationships. It wasn’t that I was turning every conversation into an autobiography or listing my quirks as an ice-breaker. I was just being more open about who I am, and people responded to it. I didn’t know it at the time, but minimizing my identity wasn’t just about avoiding awkward conversations; it kept people from really knowing me.

    I also realized that I’d pushed parts of my past so far down that they barely felt connected to me anymore. I’d kept my story neat and short for so long that I stopped thinking about the details myself. When I started being more open, those old influences and memories resurfaced, not in a nostalgic way, but in a clearer “this is part of me” way. My tastes, preferences, and daily habits have changed a lot over the years, but that doesn’t mean those earlier versions of me weren’t real or meaningful. Growth doesn’t require erasing the past; it just requires putting it in context.

    A lot has changed since those mullet-and-country-music years, but that’s still a part of who I am. Those things shaped me. These days I can’t tell you who won the last Daytona 500 anymore, but as new chapters of my life unfold, I’m learning not to shrink the story. The more I share, the more I connect. I’m still learning how to tell the fuller version of who I am, but it starts with not hiding the parts I used to leave out. For now, that feels like real progress.