Zhang Weili has pulled back the curtain on the part of fight week nobody puts in a highlight package. A clip posted to X by the account JK47 shows the former UFC women’s strawweight champion talking about the extreme water cuts she goes through before she steps into the Octagon. It was shared to r/MMA on Nov. 12, where it reopened the sport’s oldest argument about how much dehydration fighters should be asked to survive on the way to the scale.
The post itself is light on specifics, so I’m not going to invent pounds lost or hours spent in a sauna that weren’t given. What it does establish is enough. One of the best 115-pounders the UFC has ever had is on record about how hard the cut is, and the post frames what she goes through as extreme.
The timing makes it more interesting. In MMA Mania’s latest UFC Meta Rankings, Zhang dropped one spot to No. 2 at strawweight. Tatiana Suarez (13-1) jumped two places to No. 1 after turning away Virna Jandiroba at UFC Vegas 124, and that lone loss on Suarez’s record came against Zhang. Mackenzie Dern holds the belt. Cageside Press picked Suarez as the most deserving contender for Dern. Meanwhile, No. 4 Denise Gomes thinks she’s next for the champion instead of Zhang or Suarez, according to MMA Fighting’s Morning Report. That’s a crowded line, and Zhang is no longer at the front of it.
There’s another wrinkle. Those same Meta Rankings list Zhang at No. 6 in the women’s flyweight division too. That’s a strange detail to sit with in a week when the conversation is how brutal it is for her to make 115.
Her standing in the sport isn’t in question. Amanda Nunes, who returns from a three-year retirement to challenge bantamweight champion Kayla Harrison in the co-main event of UFC 334 on Saturday, Nov. 14, at Madison Square Garden, named Zhang on her women’s MMA Mount Rushmore during an appearance on the Deep Waters podcast. Nunes put herself, Valentina Shevchenko, Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Zhang on it, leaving off Ronda Rousey and Cris Cyborg because she only had four spots.
My take: I have very little patience for fighters who fade in the third round because the cut ate their gas tank. Zhang talking openly about it is useful, because most fighters treat their cut like a state secret until it goes wrong on the scale. The best version of this story ends with her answering it with matchmaking, not suffering. She’s a ranked flyweight without even trying. If Gomes or Suarez gets the next crack at Dern, the smart move is a fight at 125 to find out what Zhang looks like when she shows up hydrated.
