UFC: Zhang Weili says ‘I’m a new me’ after 2021 setbacks – ‘I will keep grinding for my dream’
- China’s former UFC strawweight champion reflects on growing as a person and a fighter from crushing lows last year
- ‘I don’t think I’m at a low point right now … I’m at the point of a final sprint,’ Zhang says
Zhang Weili is not sitting around feeling sorry for herself after the crushing lows she experienced in 2021.
“I think it would be ‘change’,” Zhang said in an interview with People Magazine in China, when asked for one word to sum up her year.
The first Chinese champion is UFC history surrendered her UFC strawweight title after a devastating first-round head kick from Rose Namajunas in April, and came up just short in a split decision defeat by the American in their November rematch.
“Nothing is forever the same, like how I went from champion to challenger. And my future goal is to go from a challenger to a champion,” she added.
“My techniques, my style, and mindset, they all changed a great deal in this past year. Because I never lost since I started my pro MMA career, I started to look inward since I lost that fight [at UFC 261 in April].
“What do I lack? How do I improve my weak areas? It’s not until after my second title defence that I finally understood what it means to be steady.
“Before I felt I was unsettled. I always wanted to show off myself. I wanted to show my strong side. I wasn’t mentally steady. Then after this fight I finally understood what it means to live in the moment and be steady.”
The 32-year-old “Magnum” ripped things up ahead of her second scrap with Namajunas at UFC 268, moving her fight camp from Beijing to the Arizona desert under the tutelage of former two-weight champ Henry Cejudo.
It ultimately didn’t work out, but Zhang pushed Namajunas to the limit, and is hell bent on making further improvements to ensure a trilogy fight goes her way.
“When you get to a certain point, you must go through these setbacks and they make you push forward again. If you don’t go through these, you will not have such deep understandings and you won’t experience such big change.
“When I was fighting in the UFC before, there weren’t any champions from Asia or China, so we went through a lot of trial and error, and accumulated experience little by little.
“This time I went abroad for fight camp and absorbed many new things including the understanding of this sport.
“Failure is not a bad thing for us. It’s a beginning for us to learn and become stronger. Now I start anew. I’m a new me. A new ‘Beijing Drifter’. I will keep grinding for my dream.
Having won 21 fights in a row – five of them in the UFC – since tasting defeat on her professional debut in 2013, Zhang is now riding back-to-back losses.
But returning to her family home in Hebei province after being released from quarantine allowed her some moments of self-reflection, particularly when she was running along the river.
“I don’t think I’m at a low point right now,” Zhang said. “I think I’m at the point of a final sprint, a point of sprinting upwards.
“There’s no need to regret the past or worry about the future. Just focus on accomplishing every single thing in the present. Eat well when it’s time to eat. Train hard when it’s time to train. Do your best at whatever it is you are doing and the future will not be too bad.”
