How the rise of Zhang Weili is helping the UFC reach China’s online masses
- Strawweight champ can’t even go for a run without being recognised in China now, nor to the airport – even when she was wearing a hazmat suit
- UFC tops 5.6 million followers on Douyin, with launch of flagship Tmall e-commerce store following opening of Performance Institute in Shanghai
A successful return on the UFC’s investment in China was always going to the hinge on whether the organisation could find a local fighter who could mix it with the best the world has to offer. Or – hopefully – a few fighters who could do the same.
Even then, there has been a sense that the rise of strawweight champion Zhang “Magnum” Weili (21-1) – and of her popularity – has taken everyone by surprise. Including the lady herself.
“When I came back to China last month, I was recognised by fans in the airport, which was amazing because I was wrapped in a protective suit,” says Zhang. “Now even when I am running outside, I have been recognised as well. I feel very good about this. I am glad to see more and more people get to know me and this MMA sport. I want to see a good development of MMA in China.”
In the lead-up to the 30-year-old Zhang’s successful and quite astonishing title defence against Poland’s former champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk (16-4) on March 7, the Chinese fighter was the most talked about subject on China’s Douyin (aka TikTok in the West). No mean feat when you consider the platform is home to an online community that numbers around 400 million.
Since winning the title – against Brazil’s Jessica Andrade in Shenzhen last August – Zhang’s online community has expanded to take in more than 1.2 million followers at home (on Weibo) and an impressive 500,000 abroad (via Instagram) as the fighter taps into her growing international fame.
The UFC itself has now topped 5.6 million followers on Douyin, which the platform claims makes it their “fastest-growing international sports property”.
UFC: Weili emerges from quarantine looking to Shevchenko
For UFC boss Dana White it has been a case of finding the right fighter at the right time, but even White seems to have been taken aback at how quickly things have moved.
“We knew she was good, we knew she was talented but just didn’t know how talented she really was or how fast we should move her,” White told the Post before UFC 248. “When you think about it, we were going into Europe and we ended up with [future middleweight champ Michael] Bisping and Conor McGregor. We started working on Australia and New Zealand and we ended up with Israel Adesanya, [Robert] Whittaker and now [Alexander] Volkanovski.
“We go into China and we end up with Zhang Weili. Oh and we went into Canada and we ended up with Georges St-Pierre. To find such talent has been the result of a lot of hard work but you can see the results for yourself.”
While the UFC is very much still a work in progress in China, a look back at the National Basketball Association’s rise reveals just how much impact having someone for the locals to cheer can have.
While Chinese fans had long been warming to the NBA – with superstar status afforded to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant through the late 1990s and the early 2000s – it wasn’t until the Houston Rockets signed Yao Ming from Shanghai in 2002 that mainland audience figures exploded.
When Yao took the court for his first match up against the Los Angeles Lakers an estimated 200 million Chinese viewers tuned in, and by last year the league’s audience across the country had reached an estimated 500 million, according to ESPN.
While the ongoing Covid-19 crisis has tempered the UFC’s immediate plans for hosting another fight card in China – like elsewhere in the word, major sporting events are on hold across the mainland – this past week has seen the launch of the organisation’s flagship Tmall e-commerce store with market-specific merchandise that include a line of Zhang T-shirts.
“The timing is right, in large part because our social media following has skyrocketed, offering us the ability to use content marketing to highlight a wide range of tailored products,” Kevin Chang, the UFCs senior vice-president for APAC, says via a statement issued at the store’s launch.
“Our fans are hungry for all things UFC and launching our official Tmall store is the next major brand extension following the successful opening of the UFC Performance Institute Shanghai last June.”
The UFC has nine Chinese fighters on its books, including the veteran welterweight Li “The Leech” Jingliang (17-6), sitting on the fringes of that division’s top 15, and No 11-ranked strawweight Yan “Fury” Xiaonan (12-1, one no contest).
Li is closing in on two million followers on Douyin, over a million on Weibo and 12,000 on Instagram, and has been getting huge traffic for the training videos he has posted on both platforms. Yan, meanwhile, sits around 35,000 (Douyin) and 30,000 (Weibo) and also spends a swathe of her time online offering advice about the sport to both those fighting and those who wish they could.
Rising bantamweight star Song “The Kung Fu Monkey” Yadong (15-4-1, one no contest) is the next Chinese fighter the world will see in action, moving up to featherweight to face Marlon Vera as part of the UFC on ESPN: Overeem vs Harris card on Sunday (Asia time).
UFC: Song Yadong takes weight rise in his stride for Vera test
Song was in Las Vegas and posting for his own burgeoning social media family back home and around the world – in both Chinese and English – and, like Li and Yan, said he hopes to be able to use his popularity to help further the sport in his homeland.
“China’s MMA fighters have good body quality and are not bad compared to foreign fighters in the same weight division,” says Song. “China’s MMA fighters lack good coaches and scientific training system so I also have a dream to build a MMA training centre in China to support the next generation of young Chinese fighters.”
Tmall is operated by the Alibaba Group which owns the South China Morning Post.
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