The champ has been studying. Just check out her Instagram, you’ll see.
Zhang Weili, the dominant force that’s been holding down the UFC strawweight title for a little over the past two years, is on there reading a book about bees.
“Many bees live here,” she reads aloud in her rapidly improving English. “What lives here? Can children live here? No, it is a home for bees.”
Admit it, she reads aloud in English a hell of a lot better than you do in Mandarin.
This is the champ’s new thing. When she’s not busting her butt in the gym or showing off a strength-to-weight ratio that would put a leaf-cutter ant to shame, she’s been working on her English.
She doesn’t have to. The Chinese-born champ has an English interpreter to accompany her in all her pre-fight interviews. He’s been by her side during the lead-up to UFC 312 in Sydney, Australia, ready to clarify questions and rout her answers into English if need be. But this is something she wants to do, maybe even feels like she should do as a world champ and fistic ambassador.
“I want people to know me,” she tells Uncrowned in English. “I want more communication with my fans. I also want better communication with coaches, to learn more technique. I have many coaches from the U.S., from New Zealand, Philippines, so I want to know more English.”
It’s not easy, Zhang admits. She keeps getting confused by the little things. Sometimes it’s he or she and other times it’s his and hers. Tricky, but she’s working on it. The champ is nothing if not diligent, maybe even obsessive, especially when it comes to acquiring new skills.
Take wrestling, for instance. Conventional wisdom tells you that it’s one of the toughest skill gaps for MMA fighters to close. Fighters who start out with a striking-first approach often struggle to even gain competent takedown defense at a professional level. Faced with opponents who want to take them down, they become overly gun shy on the feet, fearing a level change and a double-leg the instant they let a punch combination fly.
Zhang has gone the other way. In what felt like record time, she went from a fighter who was just happy to stop the occasional takedown to one who could threaten opponents with wrestling of her own. She notched 12 takedowns across her past two fights. That’s more than she had in her first seven UFC bouts combined.
Her improvements in that realm are especially important this Saturday as she defends her title against the undefeated Tatiana Suarez, a lifelong wrestler with world championship experience on the mats.
Suarez’s wrestling has been a problem for opponents in the UFC, to say the least. In seven UFC bouts, she’s yet to face a fighter she couldn’t put down. Even former strawweight champ Carla Esparza, herself a former All-American wrestler in college, gave up nine takedowns in a little under three rounds against Suarez.
Zhang knows all this, of course. She’s expecting the wrestling from Suarez. She’s expecting a game plan that’s heavy on driving her back against the fence, suffocating her in close, mixing takedowns with wrestling feints in order to land some strikes on the feet. It’s what she’d advise Suarez to do her, she says, if she were coaching the challenger for this fight.
But as the champion, she welcomes this. It’s an opportunity to prove to the world that, yes, she has added wrestling to her toolbox. She can hang with elite grapplers. She’s made it her mission, in fact.
“Before 2021, I didn’t practice a lot of wrestling,” Zhang says. “After 2021, I mixed wrestling in as a big part of my game. When I started training with [former UFC two-division champion and Olympic wrestling gold medalist] Henry Cejudo, I learned the importance of wrestling. With different opponents, I change my tactics. That’s how I grow.”
Zhang will be the first to tell you that Suarez is likely to be the best wrestler she’s ever faced. Beating her and handing Suarez her first professional loss is, the way Zhang sees it, a challenge that also doubles as a tremendous opportunity. Who could dare question her dominance atop the 115-pound weight class then? With what will future opponents hope to attack her, once she proves that this part of her game is now as good as the rest?
“I think if I beat her, it will only give me more confidence in my wrestling,” Zhang says. “I have worked very hard on that.”
No one can doubt that part. Whether it’s putting on the singlet or reading about the lives of bees, Zhang knows how to suit up as a beginner and advance with great speed. Now she gets to show us, as well as herself, just how far she’s come. And with nothing less than UFC gold and big chunk of legacy on the line.
