Weili needs to work on her boxing next.

Yea, for the extremely short amount of time that they were on the feet, Lemos was able to land a lot of clean powerful shots on Weili and a Weili wasn’t really able to land anything of her own. Would have been a really interesting fight if Lemos was able to stop even a handful of the TDs. Weili would have been in trouble.
 
I don't believe she will be improving on her boxing. She trains out of Thailand and even her striking coach from China is a Thai. Her striking is fine for the division. The issue is probably her age. Her athleticism and speed will take a dive soon due to age and hard style of training. The only saving grace is that she started training MMA late at 25.
 
It definitely didn't look great during the few times she got hit, it looked like she would get slightly stunned, but i suspect it was mainly due to being caught coming in
 
Bradillac said:
Yea, for the extremely short amount of time that they were on the feet, Lemos was able to land a lot of clean powerful shots on Weili and a Weili wasn’t really able to land anything of her own. Would have been a really interesting fight if Lemos was able to stop even a handful of the TDs. Weili would have been in trouble.
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Remove the ground strikes and Zhang still outlanded Lemos on the feet. She also scored a knockdown in that fight.
 
Stone Golem said:
Weili beats Rose if they face each other again.
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Oh, I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

Nothing has really changed with Zhang. She's still what she was when they fought, and she was always good enough to hang with Rose, if not beat her.

Rose on the other hand seems to have lost a step.

Rose would still be able to give her plenty of trouble on the feet and on the mat, maybe even beat her, but Zhang would have a way higher chance of winning now.
 
jeff7b9 said:
I suppose fighters can always stand to improve things, but I don't think Weili has the body type to ever be wildly successful at any variation of pure boxing or even boxing heavy MMA.

She is very strong and athletic and has found a lot of success playing to her strengths.

Curious to see how she handles Tatiani Suarez. Can she stop Suarez from manhandling her?
How does she achieve that?
Does she stay at kicking range, stick and move? Sprawl and brawl?
Can she keep it in the clinch?

That's a tough puzzle. I am a Saurez fan, so maybe I am biased, but I think that is going to be a VERY high level WMMA matchup.
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I agree she's fighting smart and playing to her strengths. She's mostly going to be at a height and reach disadvantage no matter how much she works on her boxing.
 
wildchild88 said:
90% of those strikes were on the ground so your argument is redundant.

Weili is one of my favourite fighters, hope she does dominate for a while, but her boxing is a weakness that she could work on.

Despite the fact that she dropped Lemos with a punch, Lemos probably landed more effective punches in the stand up and landed some really good shots.
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I think the point being she was effective in getting the strikes off where it was safer to do so, whether it was to your liking or not. Why have a striking match with a taller longer fighter when you can take someone to the ground and trap them in a crucifix then ground and pound their face?
 
wildchild88 said:
I think Suarez is a dangerous match up for Weili for a few reasons.

Weili's grappling success has come from sound wrestling tactics and strong ground positioning. She must drill like crazy, because her technique is so, quick, crisp and clean.

But a lot of this success also comes from her being the best athlete in the division. She has left herself vulnerable to subs, which she has been able to power out of against physically weaker foes. But Suarez is long, technical and strong, I could imagine her catching Weili. The wrestling scrambles would be very explosive in that fight

Standing, again Weili is a better kicker imo, but Juarez had good kicks too and is longer. Weili is a better athlete, but she's shorter and Juarez is long, strong and rangey, Juarez is a decent athlete for wmma standards too.

As a Weili fan I'd be nervous about that fight.

Not to beat a dead horse, but improving her entries and inside boxing game against someone like Juarez would be important, as it's going to be hard for her to strike at range with bigger / longer fighters.
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Hope we see it soon.

I tend to think whoever wins that fight probably reigns over the division for the next few years.

Maybe they fight more than once.

I think a lot of it comes down to how healthy Suarez is. She was on a path towards being unstoppable prior to her injuries.
 
wildchild88 said:
Weili has shown that she can dominate the fight in the realms of kicking and wrestling / grappling.

In her last few fights though, particularly in Rose 2 and Lemos, she's showed quite a bit of vulnerability in the boxing realm.

She doesn't have a varied / dynamic boxing offense (not good at entering and landing combinations) and her jab is under utilised (although I recognise she's not a rangey fighter).

Her defense isn't amazing either, she's been quite vulnerable to getting tagged with punches her whole career.

If she can fill this gap, she'll become the most complete fighter the division has ever seen.

Her team haven't seemed to pick up on this though, so I don't anticipate her working on it as much as she should.

Just my take.
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She was defending punches with her face and getting rocked/ dropped in some of her fights pre ufc. I doubt we'll see much improvement there now that she is like 34.
 
Welterskelter said:
I think the point being she was effective in getting the strikes off where it was safer to do so, whether it was to your liking or not. Why have a striking match with a taller longer fighter when you can take someone to the ground and trap them in a crucifix then ground and pound their face?
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Oh for sure, but it's something I've noticed in a number of fights.

The Lemos knockdown was sick though.
 
She does a lot.of hopping and posing with her hands I don't like

Eats up the gas tank and can fuck up her defense
 
fortheo said:
She was defending punches with her face and getting rocked/ dropped in some of her fights pre ufc. I doubt we'll see much improvement there now that she is like 34.
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Well she's become a great mma wrestler in the space of two fights, she trains hard and is able to incorporate massive improvements between fights.
 
Training muay thai/kickboxing enough. It works for her. No need to change the formula. She might fall in love with her hands and realize that she's the Artem of her division too late.
 
wildchild88 said:
Well she's become a great mma wrestler in the space of two fights, she trains hard and is able to incorporate massive improvements between fights.
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It just seems like something that should have been blatantly obvious to her before. If she hasn't improved it yet, I suspect it is because it is just something that she struggles with. Maybe her improvement in wrestling is her way to work around that weakness in her game.
 
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fortheo said:
It just ses like something that should have been blatantly obvious to her before. If she hasn't improved it yet, I suspect it is because it is just something that she struggles with. Maybe her improvement in russian is her way to world around that weakness in her game.
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Her trainers seem quite thai centric in her training.

Lots of muay thai kicking drills, elbows and basic punch kick combos. (I love muay thai though)

It's not going to happen, but I'd love to see her work with someone like Parillo (or Whittman, but he's with Rose) they could add some really great tweaks / approaches to her striking game.
 
wildchild88 said:
Her trainers seem quite thai centric in her training.

Lots of muay thai kicking drills, elbows and basic punch kick combos. (I love muay thai though)

It's not going to happen, but I'd love to see her work with someone like Parillo (or Whittman, but he's with Rose) they could add some really great tweaks / approaches to her striking game.
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For all we know she's just doing Muaythai drills for instagram/tiktok. Behind closed doors, an army of manlet dagis and chechens wrestling 8 hrs a day.
 
She just needs to throw some GNP. She would have had a finish in the first two rounds if she focused on that. Instead she kept going for submissions, giving the opponent a chance to recover.
 
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