Stamp Fairtex got back into the fight game to lose weight.
Over the last couple of years, Stamp has become a megastar in Asia, winning multiple world titles under the ONE Championship banner, including the ONE atomweight kickboxing and Muay Thai championships.
Today, she sits atop the atomweight MMA throne after scoring an incredible body-shot KO against Ham Seo Hee in September 2023 to claim the vacant crown.
Recently, Stamp sat down with former UFC and ONE titleholder Demetrious Johnson to talk all things combat sports. Though she had regularly competed in Thailand when she was a teenager, Stamp revealed that she decided to give fighting another go primarily because she’d put on a few extra pounds during her time away from the sport.
Johnson: “Then you came back to fighting because you wanted to cut weight? Because you said you got fat?”
Stamp: “Yes.”
Johnson: “Okay, I’m sorry to hear that. So you came back to fighting because you got fat? Nobody pressured you into fighting again, you just thought, ‘I’m fat, I think I’ll give it a shot’?”
Stamp: “No one, not expect for come back for fight, really. Yeah, I just like—I want, because I want to cut… I talk with my uncle. He said, ‘Do you want to keep fighting?’ I say, ‘Yes.’ Then he say, ‘Okay, so should start again.’ Yeah, then we train hard, run hard, everything hard. My weight, like, 56 that time, 56, but I have a lot of fat. Then come down, like, 48. Then I beat everyone.”
Stamp Fairtex returns to action on August 1
Originally, Stamp was set to defend her ONE atomweight MMA world title against her former training partner, Denice Zamboanga, at ONE 167 in June. Sadly, the fight never came to fruition as Stamp suffered a torn meniscus while training.
Since then, Stamp has undergone surgery and is already back in the gym training for her rescheduled scrap with Zamboanga, which is scheduled for Friday, August 1, when ONE Championship heads back to Denver, Colorado for ONE 173.
Zamboanga goes into the bout as the ONE interim atomweight MMA champion, a title she won via a dominant performance over Alyona Rassohyna in January.
