UFC 248: Dana White takes a subtle shot at Joanna Jedrzejczyk ahead of title fight
Joanna Jedrzejczyk will attempt to become a 2-time Strawweight Champion at UFC 248 when she takes on the current Queen of the division Weili Zhang. The Chinese sensation became the first UFC Champion in her country's history and will represent China as she takes on the greatest Strawweight in MMA history.
It's a huge challenge for Zhang, especially given the circumstances of her training camp. Due to the outbreak of Coronavirus, she was told by the UFC to leave China, so she took her camp to Thailand.
After that, she went to Abu Dhabi before making her way to the United States of America, where she's now training in the UC Performance Center.
There's no doubt that she's had to face a lot of adversity and she has the respect of UFC President Dana White, who praised her in a media scrum in Las Vegas (H/T BJPENN.com) while taking a subtle shot at Jedrzejczyk:
“These two, right now, if you look at Joanna, she’s out at the beach and living the lifestyle. Then you watch Weili Zhang’s posts on Instagram — hardcore training, non-stop training, all she thinks about is fighting — it’s fascinating. I love this fight."
He said that Zhang punches better than "99% of the men" that he's known in his career.
“Have you watched some of her videos training? They had a video of her punching the other day. And I’m telling you right now, she throws punches better than 99 percent of the men that I’ve ever known in my entire career."
It's a big endorsement from the UFC President, but Zhang knows that she needs to take Jedrzejczyk seriously. Normally, less training happens in the week of the fight since the hard work and drilling is normally done by then.
Per UFC embedded, Zhang's current focus this week is on a relatively small weight cut.