Tiffany Teo held her own for 25 gruelling minutes, but ultimately fell short in her goal to become the first Singapore-born mixed martial arts (MMA) champion in One Championship.

The Singaporean challenged Xiong Jingnan for the Chinese fighter's women's strawweight world title at One's Inside The Matrix event at the Indoor Stadium last night, but came up short as the judges scored unanimously in the defending champion's favour at the end of the five-round bout.

The pair had crossed paths once for the title before, in Jakarta in January 2018, with Xiong winning via a technical knockout in the fourth round.

After a cagey first round, both fighters found their range. Following a scramble, Teo almost succeeded in a kimura lock submission in the second round.

Xiong, however, managed to escape and fired off crisp punches throughout the rest of the fight. While it was not her most dominant performance, the 32-year-old Shandong native never looked in serious danger of losing her title and the judges' scorecards reflected that.

Post-fight, Teo, 30, who sported a nasty-looking cut on her left brow, said: "It's kind of hard to digest (the fight) now, I have to go back and have a good look at the fight again… because in the fight everything was done in the heat of the moment."

Asked about her takedown in the final round, she admitted: "Yeah, I was trying to set that up… in retrospect I should have got it done in an earlier round."

Xiong, meanwhile, said: "I'm not very satisfied with my performance tonight, but I'm still happy I managed to defend my title."

Teo's bout with Xiong was one of four world title fights on the Inside The Matrix card, which is One's biggest event of the year.

Two titles changed hands, with Vietnamese-American fighter Thanh Le defeating Vietnamese-Australian Martin Nguyen for the featherweight title via a technical knockout, and Dutchman Reinier de Ridder submitting Aung La N Sang for the middleweight title in the main event fight.​