‘I was kind of being taken advantage of’ – Danielle Kelly opens up about departure from ONE Championship
Former ONE Championship submission grappling world champion Danielle Kelly spoke about her departure from the organization.
American standout Danielle Kelly is no longer competing under the ONE Championship banner, and the 29-year-old recently provided details about what led her to part ways with the Singapore-based promotion.
Kelly made her ONE debut back in 2022 when she competed in the first-ever women’s submission grappling match in the organization, battling to a draw with Japanese MMA veteran Mei Yamaguchi. Although she was unable to secure the finish, Kelly dominated that contest and earned a $50,000 performance bonus.
Kelly would then rattle off two more victories before winning the inaugural ONE atomweight submission grappling world title with a closely contested decision victory over IBJJF world champion Jessa Khan in September 2023. Kelly’s title reign would prove short-lived, though, as she then dropped back-to-back decisions against pound-for-pound star Mayssa Bastos, who still holds the ONE world title today.
Kelly did not compete again for the promotion after her December 2024 loss to Bastos.
In a recent video posted on her YouTube channel, Kelly explains that she decided to part ways with ONE primarily because she wanted to compete more often and was disappointed in the frequency with which she was offered matches. She said that her deal with ONE was to compete up to four or five times a year, but that was not met.
She explained:
“Going in, I figured that I was going to have a lot of matches in this promotion. And in the beginning, I did. I was really happy and satisfied. But later on, going into the years, it seemed to kind of slow down for whatever reason.
“One year, I got two submissions, and I was kind of on a roll. Like, I wanted to just keep pushing women’s jiu-jitsu – jiu-jitsu as a whole, because there was a guys’ jiu-jitsu match before, but I was the first female jiu-jitsu match for ONE Championship. Being able to push out that and the pay, it brought a lot of eyes to it at the time. That was part of my decision while I was competing a lot…
“It comes to a point, like, you worked so hard and the numbers are right there, the views and everything. I’ve been always aware, but I don’t try to be cocky about it… but a lot of people do tune in to watch me and everything. In the past, I felt like in some situations I was kind of being taken advantage of…
“I wanted to constantly compete because that’s what was originally agreed to… I was going against the top grappler girls… Fast forward now, I just wanted to keep training and competing, and finding myself more sitting out, and that’s not what I agreed with, but it was just kind of walking on shells where I just had to stay on my toes until I get the next match.
“Going forward, I had my two matches after beating someone [Khan] from the same team and going against the number one grappler in the weight class [Bastos]… My second match, the rematch, I was kind of talked into taking the match, because it was brought to me from the matchmakers saying if I didn’t take the match, I didn’t know when the next time I was competing.
“And unfortunately, that’s kind of like what happened the last six, seven months. Me and my team, we were just basically like, there’s no matches being planned. Should we just ask for a release? Because the agreement was competing a lot and having, like, four or five matches a year. That’s kind of what I signed up for.”
Watch Kelly’s full statement below.
