UFC: China’s Yan Xiaonan sees title shot on the horizon – once she gets past Claudia Gadelha
- ‘I think I am way faster. I will use my feet, my pace, to beat her,’ Yan says of UFC Vegas 13 clash
- Yan thinks a history-making bout with strawweight champ Zhang Weili would follow victory
It never pays for a fighter to tempt fate by looking too far down the road, especially when there are roadblocks to be cleared first. But it has been impossible for surging Chinese strawweight Yan “Fury” Xiaonan to not think about what might be looming there on her horizon.
The UFC’s strawweight division is ruled by Zhang “Magnum” Weili (21-1) and a 5-0 win streak with the organisation has the eighth-ranked Yan (12-1) edging ever closer to a title bout that would pit two Chinese fighters into battle for a UFC belt for the first time.
Standing in Yan’s way – at UFC Fight Night 182 in Las Vegas this weekend – is the Brazilian warrior Claudia “Claudinha” Gadelha (18-4) but the Chinese fighter readily admits to having cast her gaze a little further ahead.
“I am aware of this, that if I win this fight there is the chance that I might fight Weili,” the 31-year-old Yan told SCMP MMA. “That is the direction I want to go in. Of course we know each other, although we are not close friends.
“We are in different gyms but I have watched her like everyone else. I think I am faster than her so I can beat her. I think about this a lot, about how to beat her. Because we are both Chinese I think I know how to fight her better than everyone else, and I know how to beat her.”