Luke Lessei Offers a Glimpse of His Martial Arts Beginnings Ahead of His ONE Championship Debut

Luke Lessei is set to step onto ONE Championship’s global stage for the first time in just under two weeks. But the American Muay Thai star is far from a newcomer to the sport. “The Chef” will take on veteran striker “Smokin” Jo Nattawut in featherweight action at ONE Fight Night 17: Kryklia vs. Roberts.

ONE’s first all-Muay Thai card will be live on Friday, December 8, inside the iconic Lumpinee Boxing Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand. It will be the first time fans of the world’s largest martial arts organization will get to see Lessei in action, and he offered a glimpse of his martial arts journey in a recent interview. 

Luke Lessei remembers his roots

“I came up in Iowa, middle of America, Midwest, USA, surrounded by cornfields. I grew up with a kind of traditional, hard-loving dad. He was a professional fighter as well,” he told ONE. “So he got me into martial arts and training when I was 4. My childhood, most of my memories revolve around martial arts, being in the gym with my dad, and just growing up with a father training his son to do what he loves to do. And that’s basically been my entire life’s work.”

While he enjoyed participating in sports like soccer and cross-country running as a youngster, the 27-year-old focused most of his time on Muay Thai under his dad’s guidance. Since Dubuque Martial Arts Group was the family gym, Lessei took it upon himself to be the best fighter there. 

Even as bigger and probably better fighters joined, he constantly pushed himself to improve. And though he didn’t initially plan on pursuing Muay Thai professionally, he eventually became good enough at it that it became the inevitable path to take. 

“Because we’ve always had a small team, I’ve always been the best guy at my dad’s gym, which isn’t anything to brag about,” Lessei said. “Some grown men start coming in, MMA starts getting a little bit bigger, and now I’m getting beat up in my own gym a little bit. So it’s like – I wasn’t ever going to stop. But it’s like, ‘Okay, I have to be the best in my dad’s gym,'” the 27-year-old continued.

Lessei wants complete domination

“But it wasn’t like, ‘This is what I want to do. I want to be a professional fighter.’ It was like, “I just have to be the best in this place right now. And then from that, I started getting my first knockouts, you know, at 16 to 19 years old, started knocking people out. I started getting a little bit more man strength.” 

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He’d go on to dominate the amateur ranks, winning the Thai Boxing Association tournament 13 times to put his name on the map as one of The Americas’ top talents in the sport. At ONE Fight Night 17, he’s looking to announce himself in a way that can’t be ignored. His fight with Nattawut will be broadcast live and for free on Prime Video in North America as well as in 190 countries all over the world, so an impressive win could vault his star to unprecedented heights. 

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