MMA fighter Angela Lee says 2017 car crash was suicide attempt, confirms sister Victoria took her own life

Warning: This story discusses suicide and contains descriptions of a suicide attempt.

SINGAPORE: Mixed martial arts (MMA) champion Angela Lee revealed on Tuesday (Sep 19) that her 2017 car crash in Hawaii was a suicide attempt.

She also confirmed that her sister Victoria, who died last year at the age of 18, took her own life.

The revelations were made in an article Lee wrote for the Players' Tribune, a website that publishes first-person stories from athletes.

"It's taken me a long time to get to this place, but I've now reached a point where I am comfortable and confident enough to speak the full truth," she wrote in the article titled Resilient.

"Six years ago, I tried to end my life. My car crash in November 2017 was not an accident. It was a suicide attempt," she said in an emotional account of her struggles.

Lee was 20 years old in 2017. 

She had become the youngest female ONE Championship world champion the year before and defended her title twice in 2017. She got engaged and was looking forward to a wedding.

However, as another title defence approached, she began to struggle.

"I had gotten to a place where making weight for that fight was the biggest thing in the world to me. I told myself: If you don't get this done, you'll lose everything," she wrote, adding that this mentality is a double-edged sword for athletes.

"And, with me, I got to a point where I had pushed my mind and body too far."

Lee eventually reached a point where she felt like she would rather take herself out of the fight than fail to make weight for it, adding: "I didn't want to be a disappointment to anyone."

Describing the moments before the car crash on Nov 6, 2017 – less than three weeks before her scheduled fight against Mei Yamaguchi in Singapore –