Xiaonan Yan saw her compatriot Weili Zhang regain the strawweight title last year and then defend it. But the strawweight has not been deterred by the sight of a friend who she is unlikely to ever fight winning the title she wants.
In fact Xiaonan is more determined than ever to become the UFC strawweight champion. She is based in Sacramento and has been training hard by the looks of things even though she doesn’t currently have a fight booked.
In an Instagram post the 33 year old made it very clear that she is fully focused on winning the UFC strawweight title:
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Several years
Xiaonan has been based in the US for several years now and writing in English she says,
A champion is made by passion and persistence. I love what I am doing and my goal is not going to be changed. I am here to be the champion.
Having won her last two strawweight title fights in emphatic fashion Zhang has been talking about moving up to flyweight to take on Valentina Shevchenko. That would leave a void which Xiaonan clearly has ambitions of filling.
She is coming off a majority decision win over Mackenzie Dern at UFC Vegas 61. That was arguably the biggest victory of Xiaonan’s entire career and got her back on track after two consecutive defeats.
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Narrow win
Xiaonan was able to survive the submission attempts from the decorated BJJ black belt and land some strikes of her own. Two out of the three judges saw that fight for the Chinese fighter with the third scoring it a draw.
Xiaonan would have been relieved to hear she had done enough to get the victory after narrowly coming up short in her previous fight. Marina Rodriguez beat her by split decision at UFC 272.
Afterwards the 33 year old complained about the judging. Xiaonan felt she had clearly won rounds one and two and should have been awarded the decision win.
It is not the first time a Chinese fighter has been unlucky with the judges. Weili Zhang was also extremely unhappy after her split decision loss to Rose Namajunas at UFC 268 which was seen by many as a robbery.
But both Chinese fighters are coming off wins now. Xiaonan recently announced she was proud to be a ‘strong and beautiful girl’ and she clearly feels the UFC strawweight title would look good on her.
