Zhang Weili came up short in her bid to become a two-division UFC champion after falling in lopsided fashion to Valentina Shevchenko back in November.<\/p>\n
Despite close odds and the anticipation of an all-time classic between two of the best pound-for-pound fighters on the planet, Shevchenko was just too big and too strong for the undersized Zhang, who just never managed to really get her offense going. Zhang lost a unanimous decision and her head coach John Wood admits there are a lot of factors that determined how that fight played out but the size difference between the fighters can\u2019t be ignored.<\/p>\n
\u201cValentina is clearly the best female fighter in the world currently,\u201d Wood told MMA Fighting. \u201cShe proved it that night. She is so good at doing what she does. She is the best in the world, there is nobody better, at doing what she does. That fight, basically, Valentina will fight you, she\u2019ll eke out [rounds], she\u2019ll point fight you, she\u2019ll wrestle you down, she\u2019ll hold you down. She\u2019ll eke out a fight. She is so patient. Her timing is so good. She is OK doing whatever she needs to do to win a fight. When you fight somebody like that and you don\u2019t have that kind of patience and sometimes if feels like things aren\u2019t going the way you want them to go when you\u2019re fighting somebody like that. You\u2019ve seen over the years, Valentina will lull somebody to sleep or she\u2019ll just eke it out and you\u2019re like I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on and she\u2019ll just beat you a little bit everywhere or she\u2019ll just take you down and hold you down or she\u2019ll kick you in the head. I did not see it going that one-sided.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s weight classes for a reason and when you take two equally skilled fighters, the bigger, stronger one is sometimes going to have the advantage. I know what Weili\u2019s capable of and everybody does. She\u2019s the best strawweight we\u2019ve ever seen. She\u2019s amazing. That woman is an athlete and I\u2019ve seen what she does in the gym. To have Valentina do that and be able to hold her down and do those things was impressive. There\u2019s weight classes for a reason and sometimes you\u2019ve got to find that out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Naturally, Zhang\u2019s loss immediately led to a conversation about her future and a potential return to the strawweight division where she was the reigning champion until giving up her belt to take a stab at the flyweight title.<\/p>\n
In her absence, Mackenzie Dern captured the vacant title but she\u2019s expected to be a sizable underdog against Zhang if she returns to 115 pounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s obviously a clear cut path to go back and take that title from Mackenzie \u2014 no disrespect to Mackenzie,\u201d Wood said about the potential fight. \u201cThat\u2019s Weili\u2019s belt.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people looking at that and obviously that\u2019s the fight to make. We\u2019ll see what she wants to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ideally, Wood would prefer if Zhang didn\u2019t have to endure such a tough weight cut to get back down to 115 pounds but he also understands that\u2019s the nature of the beast when it comes to competing in MMA.<\/p>\n
Fighters so rarely compete at their natural size and instead shed immense amounts of weight to compete with other athletes doing the same exact thing.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Wood would love to see Zhang at her absolute best without suffering through a brutal weight cut but he knows that\u2019s unlikely to happen any time soon if ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me go on record what nobody\u2019s ever said before but weight cutting is the stupidest shit in the world. It really is,\u201d Wood said sarcastically. \u201cIt blows my mind every time we do this. It sucks that we have to do it but it is part of the sport. It is part of what we do. Every time I do it, watching these poor guys suffer for really no reason other than the fact someone wants to cheat the system \u2014 not cheat it but if the playing field was level, I think you\u2019d have just have a lot happier fighters, you\u2019d have a lot crazier, better fights but it\u2019s just so nuts what these guys do to make weight. I feel bad for everybody every time they cut weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cWeili\u2019s a perfect example. She\u2019s a little muscle hamster. She is just in that spot where she\u2019s probably too big to be a strawweight. As you get older, that shit sucks. It\u2019s harder to cut weight and she\u2019s probably a little too small to be at the top [at flyweight].\u201d<\/p>\n
While that probably means Zhang\u2019s future is back at strawweight, Wood won\u2019t discount the possibility that she makes a few tweaks and changes and eventually tests herself at 125 pounds again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Weili can go and make adjustments and fight a completely different fight,\u201d Wood said. \u201cShe\u2019s that kind of athlete and that kind of competitor. It\u2019s just doing what you think is best for your career, what you want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zhang Weili came up short in her bid to become a two-division UFC champion after falling in lopsided…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702,3194],"class_list":["post-390009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}