Preview: UFC 300 ‘Pereira vs. Hill’

UFC Women’s Strawweight Championship

#2 P4P | Weili Zhang (24-3, 8-2 UFC) vs. #10 P4P | Xiaonan Yan (18-3, 8-2 UFC)

ODDS: Zhang (-485), Yan (+370)

Some history gets made in the co-main event, as this marks the UFC’s first all-Chinese title fight—something that would have been close to unthinkable about a decade ago. That marked the UFC’s first real push into China, which yielded little but welterweight stalwart Jingliang Li. Thankfully, the debut of Zhang alone indicated that the UFC’s second wave of Chinese talent would fare much better than the first. An impressive finisher on the regional scene, “Magnum” needed all of one fight to adjust to life inside the Octagon. Her debut against Danielle Taylor was a flat decision win, but Zhang lived up to the hype in her sophomore effort, a quick and brutal beating of Jessica Aguilar. With one more win over Tecia Torres, the UFC was firmly in the Zhang business, allowing her to jump the line into a title shot against Jessica Andrade for a card in mainland China. While her getting the title shot might have been a bit questionable based on merit, Zhang affirmed that she was a championship-level fighter once she got there, knocking out Andrade in just 42 seconds to give China its first UFC champion. Zhang’s profile only grew with her first title defense, a five-round war against Joanna Jedrzejczyk that ranks on the shortlist of greatest fights of all-time, which seemed to set her up as something truly special. Instead, it would be over two years until her next win. The coronavirus pandemic wiped out the rest of Zhang’s 2021, and her 2022 campaign was spent taking two losses to Rose Namajunas. The first was a stunning 78-second knockout that saw Namajunas take the strawweight belt, and the immediate rematch was a nip-tuck affair that saw “Thug Rose” scrape by with a decision win. Fortunately for Zhang, she rebounded quite impressively. A rematch with Jedrzejczyk was much more one-sided before ending in a second-round knockout for Zhang, and Carla Esparza—who had since won the belt from Namajunas—had little to offer until a second-round submission that put the Chinese star back on top of the division. Somewhat surprisingly given her status as the UFC’s best fighter in an important market, Zhang has not kept an active schedule since regaining the belt. Her lone title defense thus far was an August win over Amanda Lemos, which quickly turned into a wrestling-heavy grind in Zhang’s favor. With countrywoman Yan waiting in the wings as a top contender, the thought was that the UFC was waiting to save the pairing for a card in China. Instead, it gets a prominent position on the biggest card of 2024.

Yan’s UFC career has been a bit hard to parse at times. Part of the same spate of Chinese signings that included Zhang, Yan was a bit of an afterthought who has had to prove herself as an overachiever rather than someone affirming her top prospect status. Given where she started, Yan had an impressive rise through the ranks with six straight wins to kick off her UFC career, even if she still felt somewhat unproven along the way. Her main skill has been her volume-heavy striking game, and the sense was that she was facing a combination of opponents who either could not test her weaknesses or were entering their late-career slides. That feeling only got stronger once she suffered her first career loss against Esparza. The first strong wrestler on Yan’s resume, Esparza got the fight to the mat and made her look absolutely clueless before pounding out a stoppage. Yan has obviously improved from there, particularly on the mat, though it is still unclear exactly how well her weaknesses will hold up at an elite level; Yan’s current two-fight winning streak might say more about her opponents’ issues than anything else. Her grappling looked much better against submission ace Mackenzie Dern, but Dern’s performances have been consistently inconsistent, while Andrade looked in poor form before charging into a Yan knockout. Even with all that said, Yan’s accuracy and striking volume could cause a lot of issues for Zhang, who herself is a bit hard to calibrate. Her second fight against Namajunas and win over Lemos suggest she is becoming more comfortable with using her wrestling as a safety valve, but her approaches are not always consistent from fight to fight and a lot of her success still depends on her physicality and athleticism. Of course, that physicality and athleticism does figure to pay off once again, and as much as Yan’s defensive wrestling and grappling appear to have improved, Zhang’s recent stylistic pivots are a case of the champion’s strengths matching up with the challenger’s weaknesses. Hopefully, Zhang does not make this an ugly grind, but the champion’s horsepower gives her the nod against an opponent who is unlikely to knock her out. The pick is Zhang via decision.

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Pereira vs. Hill
Zhang vs. Yan
Gaethje vs. Holloway
Tsarukyan vs. Oliveira
Nickal vs. Brundage
The Prelims