Comments like "they will never get to fight" does annoy me. There's no way you can know, and they might very well be fighting outside of One or Rizin in the future, like going to UFC or so. There's no way you can know, and it may be very well possible.
A lot of the people in ONE and RIZIN (which include their big muckity-mucks like Angela and RENA) don't consider the organizations to be low-level feeders that they're just biding their time in until they can make it to the UFC, though.
Besides that, most of the time fighters get to the point where they realize what a phantom chase trying to prove that "I'm the best fighter in the world" is and that making good business decisions is more important than throwing everything away to try to reach that goal. So they don't really
want to fight in the UFC unless the UFC meets that demand (that is, they give a better contract than what they're currently getting.)
Bibiano Fernandes is like that. ONE's paying him better than anywhere else in the world is and I think he has like 6 kids, and he's said outright that that's paramount now, so he's staying there (and ONE has a cushy executive job waiting for him after he's retired.)
It's not like the best atomweights in the world are in the UFC anyways, and unless the UFC plans a deep Asian expansion (which history has shown they're not), they're not gonna be outbidding RIZIN and ONE for Angela and RENA's services. They're also locked into exclusive contracts, and those aren't things that can just be broken-- if they were, Mark Hunt would be out of the UFC right now.
I don't know; One brought Mei over from Deep Jewels and Gina Iniong over from Pacific Xtreme Combat. Hopefully they'll eventually bring over Rena over from Rizin, Seo Hee Ham from Road, Ayaka Hamasaki from Invicta and Weili Zhang from Kunlun. They seem to have the deep pockets.
None of those other people are really big enough draws in Southeast-Asia to wanna give 'em lucrative contracts, though. The big reason ONE and RIZIN have had success is cuz' they know what their audience wants. Southeast-Asians want people who live in Southeast-Asia-- they could give a
fuck about anyone else (there's a reason they started out with guys like Arlovski, and Manhoef, and Sylvia, and Baroni, and have shifted entirely towards Aung La N Sang, and Ev Ting, and Kevin Belingon, and Stefer Rahardian)-- and the Japanese want cute Japanese girls and fighters (ideally Japanese) that show that
Yamato-damashii spirit, along with some theatricality.
Unless there's some good ancillary reason (and you'll be hard-pressed to find that with women's fighters), they're not really willing to go out of their way to sign anyone who doesn't fit those criteria. That money could be better spent elsewhere.
If there was gonna be a fight between them, there'd have to be some cross-promotional thing going on where both companies would make good money from it, and I don't think the numbers are there to justify it.
As if One hasn't been carefully grooming Angela Lee with handpicked opponents themselves. Take Yamaguchi out of the equation and their level of competition is comparable.
That cute Brazilian lesbian Istela Nunes she fought was a Muay Thai world champion and coming off a victory over Mei Yamaguchi, so I think that stacks her up with V.V a far as competition-level goes.
