UFC 248: Dana White says Zhang Weili ‘punches mitts better than 99.9 per cent of male fighters’

UFC president thinks ‘super violent’ Zhang gets ‘better and better every time you see her’

White pinning UFC’s China fortunes on Zhang ‘if she can take out all these killers coming after her’

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Zhang Weili trains at the UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas. Photo: Handout

Published: 6:31pm, 5 Mar 2020Updated: 9:09pm, 6 Mar 2020

The fight fan in Dana White is quite obviously taken by the storybook rise of strawweight Zhang “Magnum” Weili to become China’s first UFC champion. The businessman in him sees the far bigger picture.

“If she can continue to defend that belt and take out all these killers that are coming after her now, you can see [the UFC] doing more and more in China,” White told the Post on Wednesday.

Zhang will on Saturday make the first defence of the title she won with a 42-second obliteration of Brazil’s Jessica Andrade in Shenzhen last August. At the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas she will become what’s believed to be the first representative of her nation – from any combat sport code – to headline a card in the world’s fight capital.

That honour falls just as the UFC is rapidly expanding its interests in China, following the opening last year of the US$13 million Performance Institute in Shanghai which will host the inaugural season of Dana White’s Contender Series Asia, once the coronavirus crisis has passed.

Zhang Weili during the UFC 248 open workouts at MGM Grand. Photo: Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

Standing in Zhang’s way come Saturday is Poland’s former champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk, who defended the crown five times before losing it and has vowed to “take back what is mine”.