The theme of the late 2010s might well be “pandering to China”. From Hollywood’s efforts to entice the Chinese market, to Kingdom Hearts 3 developers going out of their way to make the portion of the game containing Winnie the Pooh entirely pointless so that the Chinese release wouldn’t suffer when it was cut, everyone recognizes that even a fraction of a percent of one billion people is still a chance at some serious money. The UFC have been open about their desire to tap the Chinese market for quite a while and after some testers in China-lite (Macao) the UFC took the plunge with a card in Shanghai in 2017, followed by one in Beijing in November of 2018.

Getting a population invested in professional fighting has always required some local talent to rally around, so this weekend’s Fight Night card from Shenzen coincides with the opening of the UFC’s performance institute in Shanghai. If the UFC can actually get some quality prospects coming out of China in any serious number, the market should open itself. It seems to make sense—from table tennis to weightlifting to diving, everything the Chinese invest time and resources into they are able to produce a world class crop of athletes in. Arguably the best regarded MMA fighter out of China—in terms of ranking in their own division—is Weili Zhang and so UFC Shenzen also gives us the first Chinese fighter to receive a title shot in UFC history. On Saturday night, Zhang meets the berserk aggression of Jessica Andrade.

Weili Zhang and the Sanda Side Kick

Until recently Weili Zhang held a 95% finishing rate, though she had mostly fought scrubs in Chinese promotions. Since coming to the UFC she has looked good and handled herself well, but gone to the decision against Danielle Taylor and Tecia Torres—a rough bit of matchmaking as both of those fighters as good as guarantee a tedious fifteen minutes, win or lose.

Watching Zhang fight you very quickly realize that the vast majority of her game revolves around landing her left round kick. Often this is a short, step-up inside low kick. Occasionally she will go to the body but it seems as though eight in every ten attacks are the inside low kick. Why the focus on this weapon? Well firstly it is a decent point scorer on its own. Secondly it can be used as a lead or a counter, breaking the opponent’s balance as they step in onto their lead leg, and it flows nicely into her counter left hook if the opponent insists on pressing in. And finally, it pairs well with the flashier kicks of sanda / sanshou.

It can also be surprising how much distance Zhang is able to cover on her step up low kick. Take note of where her right foot begins (the yellow X) and how she is almost able to skip it past her lead foot’s original position. This does, however, cause some problems we will touch on later.

Sanda / sanshou is effectively kung fu but real. It came out of traditional Chinese martial arts but the rule set is basically a modified form of kickboxing which prioritizes throws and sweeps, and discourages elbows and knees. Sanda loves the side kick and spinning attacks, and you can see this in just about every fighter that comes out of China with a bit of sanda experience, but the difficulty has always been playing those kicks off a more orthodox kickboxing style.

Side kicks and spinning attacks are best used out of a bladed stance but in any sport where you are expected to absorb or check hard round kicks to the body and legs, a more squared stance is a must. Bill Wallace could stand completely side on and side kick straight out of his stance in American style kickboxing because he didn’t have to worry about being kicked in the lead leg. For sanda, proper kickboxing, and for most fighters in MMA, the side kick involves some preliminary motions to get into a bladed position first.

One way that this can be done is to use the side kick as a secondary attack. Where your primary attacks are the ones that can be fired straight out of your stance, secondary attacks benefit from the set up of a previous technique. In Zhang’s instance the lead leg inside kick is a constant—gaining its power from the twist of the hips from squared to side on. But if the opponent retracts the lead leg or retreats and her kick misses she ends up out of position.

She might be out of her stance and appear vulnerable, but you will notice that her left hip and right foot are on a line, pointing at her opponent. This is the perfect position to fire the side kick off the same leg. Obviously Zhang would rather you never move your lead leg and just eat low kick after low kick, but if she misses and you attempt to capitalize, she gets a chance to stop you with a more powerful kick that would be more difficult to set up on her own terms.

It’s a very simple trap, but of course the simpler the pattern the more likely the opponent is to recognize it. Zhang’s opponents often stop charging at her as soon as she misses her low kick, but that doesn’t mean she cannot set up the side kick. In this instance, Zhang misses her low kick, prepares her side kick and Danielle Taylor doesn’t step in. Instead, Zhang puts her foot down, remains in a side on stance, and strafes across to follow Taylor before throwing the side kick out of the bladed stance. Think of it like using your strikes to switch stances but instead of the big change from orthodox to southpaw, you’re making a smaller change from squared to bladed and it’s even more difficult to keep up with as a result.

Zhang also uses these transitions into a bladed stance to set up back kicks. Here Tecia Torres retreats from the low kick and moves back in to counter. Zhang puts her kick leg down to the floor, as she does when she wants to throw the side kick, but this time steps her right leg back and creates some distance before spinning into the back kick.

Zhang will also use the back kick to try and catch her opponent circling along the fence—probably the best time for anyone to throw spinning kicks—but misses a great many more back kicks than she lands.

One other interesting look that Zhang shows is a jumping switch oblique kick. A jumping switch kick, bicycle kick or nidan geri is a movement where the first leg kicks or fakes and then with a jump the second kick is delivered off what was the standing leg. Saenchai’s best work is often done with these sort of kicks. Zhang’s variation ends in an oblique kick to the front of the lead leg and while it looks great, it is probably never going to work on a conscious opponent.

This is because Zhang spends the entire fight conditioning her opponent to her lead leg kicking game. They get used to either retreating, pulling the lead leg back, or checking when they see her moving. Each one of those actions is not only the right way to deal with the inside low kick—they work just as well against the oblique kick. So rather than drawing a reaction that the second strike then capitalizes on, this technique draws the exact reaction needed for the legitimate technique that comes a split second later anyway. It is in some ways reminiscent of Yair Rodriguez’s use of a stomping, knee inverting low line side kick to set up wheel kicks, but the opponent is already running a mile when he raises his leg for the preliminary side kick.

Weili Zhang is in a pretty strange position in this fight. She has been allowed onto the front foot in many of her fights because she is such a large, powerful straw-weight, but she is unlikely to outmuscle Jessica Andrade for five rounds. Zhang’s best punch has been the left hook (like Andrade) yet she scores it in scrappy trades rather than on clean counters, this seems to play right into Andrade’s own style of swanging and banging.

Then there is the reliance on the inside low kick. Because she often makes so much ground on the inside low kick and it almost always requires a step up, Zhang has been caught a good few times overstepping when the opponent doesn’t retreat as she expects. Taylor and Torres both cracked her and took her down off overstepped kicks. And while the inside low kick can be used on the counter and between retreats, this is much better suited to kickboxing where the opponent cannot just grab the leg and run through on a takedown. When Jessica Aguilar refused to give Zhang respect and space, Zhang attempted to score kicks between retreats and wound up on the fence pretty fast. She head and armed her way out of trouble to win the fight but trying to muscle your way out of bad position is not an encouraging gameplan against Jessica Andrade. In fact the only success fighters have found against Andrade at straw-weight is to apply prevention instead of cure and just stay off the fence.

Finally it is worth noting that Zhang has some nice trips and upper body throws but that she, like so many in the WMMA game, relies heavily on the head and arm. The Torres fight consisted of both hitting head and arm throws, then getting rolled with the momentum. One of Andrade’s great strengths has been sticking to lower body takedowns and pick ups along the fence for the most part—leaving less risk of a roll through or a back take if she gets sloppy.

My experience in researching Weili Zhang is that she is a fun fighter to talk about, but not always a fun fighter to watch. Furthermore, her record seems to have been considerably inflated by defending her Kunlun title against fighters with losing records. Her offence is a little one-note and the razzle dazzle is there to impress judges more than it is to hurt anyone. That is not to write her off though—she is a good, game fighter and most importantly the champion, Jessica Andrade is deeply flawed in her own right. It is simply that so much of beating Andrade is in the movement and the ring generalship, where Zhang’s game seems at its best when her opponent doesn’t want to close or push her to the fence.