the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Posted: **Sun Apr 18, 2021 10:24 am**

UFC - Ultimate Fighting Championship
Apr 18, 2021

UFC 261 Countdown previews strawweight queen Zhang Weili's battle with “Thug” Rose Namajunas. Watch these athletes train and prepare for the championship fight on Saturday, April 24.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJVQboyDin8

Posted: **Sun Apr 18, 2021 1:25 pm**

Interesting fight - Rose has the better technique, but I think Zhang's conditioning is far superior. Could go either way.

Posted: **Sun Apr 18, 2021 5:30 pm**

GrahamB wrote:Interesting fight - Rose has the better technique, but I think Zhang's conditioning is far superior. Could go either way.

Rose has better boxing and head movement. However, Zhang may have more techniques long and close range. Not sure who is better at submissions or ground and pound. However, Zhang is physically stronger.

Rose Pros: Boxing (e.g. timing, accuracy, etc.), head movement, defense, distance management and team IQ/strategy.

Weili Pros: More weapons (e.g., framing, elbows off the clinch, etc.), pressure fighter, MMA/Sanda experience, stamina, stronger physically/mentally and fascia/feet

.

Weili is the current betting favorite at Weili Zhang (-190) vs. Rose Namajunas (+171)

SCMP MMA
Apr 16, 2021

0:00 Intro
0:37 Arrival in Florida
1:10 Development in 2020/Training camp for UFC 261
5:14 Zhang Weili/Joanna Jedrzejczyk
7:50 UFC in China
10:00 Rose Namajunas/Jessica Andrade
11:06 Reaction to Rose Namajunas' controversial comments
18:00 Prediction for Zhang/Namajunas fight
20:04 Potential Valentina Shevchenko superfight
24:53 Jon Jones moving up the heavyweight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUyFgh_DsjE

Posted: **Sat Apr 24, 2021 11:06 pm**

Rose Namajunas showed good timing and accuracy with her lead-leg head kick to floor Weili, winning by KO in 78 seconds of round 1.

Posted: **Mon Apr 26, 2021 2:44 pm**

This was one of the craziest cards I remember. Leg kick TKO, broken leg TKO, R1 KO of the undefeated champ, it was a very interesting event.

Posted: **Mon Apr 26, 2021 2:59 pm**

It was an incredible card. Did you see the first fight on the prelims? UFC 261: Ariane Carnelossi vs Liang Na - absolute insanity! That was the best fight of the night for me.

Posted: **Mon Apr 26, 2021 5:06 pm**

Real dim mak! Only with feet taping faces & knees.

Posted: **Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:16 am**

GrahamB wrote:It was an incredible card. Did you see the first fight on the prelims? UFC 261: Ariane Carnelossi vs Liang Na - absolute insanity! That was the best fight of the night for me.

Yes, the back and forth control of the fight was entertaining. Liang Na is 5' 9", not 5' 5" as they announced. That's tall for 115 lbs. At the end of the first round, Liang was so exhausted that her coach had to help her get up and bring her back to the corner. At least, she gave it all she had. All four fighters from China (Liang, Zhu, Qileng and Zhang) lost. The action-packed card went by fast, because out of the 13 fights 9 were finishes.

Excerpt from "Zhang Weili releases statement after quick Namajunas loss: ‘Hopefully UFC will schedule a rematch’"

Zhang Weili on Apr 25, 2021 wrote:“I want to congratulate Rose on her victory,” Weili wrote. “She bounced back from her defeat. I believe I will also come back, only beat a great champion, to become a legend, and beat a legend, I will become a new me. Before, my goal was to win the UFC championship, but today, I have a higher goal than that. Thank you! It’s normal to lose and win. That’s the UFC. Andrade, Joanna, Rose have all lost and they all come back and try again. I have deepened my understanding of UFC today. So I believe I can come back. Hopefully the UFC will schedule a rematch soon.”

Edit: Rose half steps with the lead leg and feints a jab, then pulls the lead leg back. This causes Weili to take a small step forward and rotate forward with her rear hand parry. As Weili steps forward, Rose simultaneously half steps forward, pendulum steps chambering her Taekwondo kick. (Rose's push/pull/push half step causes Weili to half step forward, weight the front foot, think about the jab and then the low leg kick and reverse her direction from the front foot to retreating on the back foot to avoid the fake low kick.) Rose fakes the low leg kick by constantly looking down, then finishes her Taekwondo kick to Weili's head knocking her down:

Posted: **Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:21 am**

She's a black belt in Tae kwon do, and Karate too I think.

Posted: **Wed Apr 28, 2021 2:48 am**

If you watch the slow mo, Zhang's eyes literally cross when that kick hits the button.

Fwiw.

S

Posted: **Wed Apr 28, 2021 6:34 am**

Everybody has a plan until....

Posted: **Wed Apr 28, 2021 8:28 am**

Steve James wrote:Everybody has a plan until....

Part of Rose's team's plans was to exploit Weili's weaknesses, one being defending the head kick. Watching youtube videos, Weili's training (e.g., defense on pad work, over emphasis on power, footwork, etc.) and coaching (e.g., corner advice) are at a lower level than Rose's.

In Rose's after fight interview, “I saw her body fall over really stiff and I was like, oh dang that definitely worked a lot better than I thought it was going to. But I did see that kick landing in my mind leading up to this fight. I didn’t think that was going to be the finish, but that was one of many ways that I seen this fight going. As soon as she kinda turned over, I thought there was maybe a moment she could pop back up and wake back up again, but those hammerfists are just money and I knew it was over after that.”

Posted: **Wed Apr 28, 2021 2:57 pm**

so Zhang's team should see she's bad with head kicks, but still she isn't prepared? seems like good planning in Rose's corner and bad in Zhang's as some of you said in the previews.

Posted: **Fri Apr 30, 2021 12:11 am**

everything wrote:so Zhang's team should see she's bad with head kicks, but still she isn't prepared? seems like good planning in Rose's corner and bad in Zhang's as some of you said in the previews.

ESPN MMA
Apr 28, 2021

[9:18] Breaking down her high kick that led to the finish in the first round:

Rose Namajunas on April 28, 2021 wrote:… But, that particular technique we worked on. That was definitely part of the game plan. And, I knew that was a vulnerability that she had. Pat has been to China and kicked boxed there for a long time in his early days. And, a lot of his knockouts came from left high kick over there. So, it’s just something that we worked on. … Oh yeah, everything was set up from all the movement. It was a perfectly executed game plan. There were other things part of the game plan. But, that was definitely one of the main things. … There is like multiple calculations going on, all at once. And, to put it into just this is the one thing that I saw, there’s so many things that I see just by her movement, even just the way she like kind of moves out of the way. She does that little like weird hip thing, like Sanchai does. All of her tendencies I study. I don’t know her. But, I do know I think a lot about her. I feel my calculations were pretty spot-on. They are all theories, right? Then, you go into the fight and test them out. And, I was right. … Yeah, Pat and I worked on that a lot (look down, then kick high). Yeah man, I played that there like a violin. It’s so intricate. It’s not just how hard you punch and kick. It’s not how strong you are. It’s an art. It’s so much that goes into this that I couldn’t even write it all down. There’s a lot of we do right now. But there’s also a bunch of decision making and things and preparation that once you get into the fight, things just kind of happen and all that preparation sort of comes together.