#ufc312

And with that, Zhang has effectively cleaned out 115lbs.

After that 1st round it was all Weili Zhang. Absolutely brutal grappling defense from Zhang. Hitting reversals and takedowns of her own. Using her strikes into range and catch Suarez out of position. Just shucking off Suarez's takedown attempts along the fence with deep underhooks and terrific balance. She forced Suarez to completely abandon the single leg game she had used her entire MMA career and forced her to try for double legs and body locks. And when she was stranded on the feet, she was just straight up lost. Zhang's engine is surreal. Came into the 5th round looking like the fight hadn't even started. Even if she wasn't 35 years old, that is insane cardio.

For the record, can't stand either one of these guys so my interest (or lack thereof) was based around how this fight would play out. And I figured it play out a lot like the first fight, which was dull. But I banked on one key difference - DDP is actually a smart fighter. He will adapt, gameplan, and try new ideas.

DDP came out with a lot of new ideas that panned out well for him in this fight. He was countering Strickland's offense early. The jab was getting followed back with big overhand rights and awkward hooks from DDP. He was kicking Strickland to the leg after he would go for those front kicks. He'd go southpaw and just throw that question mark kick over the rear hand of Strickland or literally leap into a jab before shifting through for the big 2.

Weili knew Tatiana would go for takedown and try to choke and jump guillotine whenever there's an opportunity, trying to stop Suarez with just defense the takedown would be useless, so she anticipated the possibility of losing the first two rounds, then she gonna got it back in championship rounds. (I bet she didn't expect that Tatiana had that poor cardio) For the gilly in 1st round, Weili didn't panic cuz they had practiced escaping any type of guillotine as Josh Hinger was in her corner which make sense. Tatiana was very powerful in ground control during the first few minutes, but she got reversed because of that inappropriate gilly.

And there's a funny thing weili mentioned, when they were fighting near Tatiana's corner in 2nd round, Tati's fiance winked at her when she was holding Tati on the ground and punched her face, she's get confused by abt 1 second then nodded as saying hi. That’s fucking hilarious...Another intriguing thing is she said that fight was almost got cancelled, because a week before the fight a big boil appeared on the back of her thigh and she reported to UFC, is that the reason she was the underdog?