Regarding Zhang Zhilei and Wilder's main event, I would like to make a clarification. Today is May 8, 2024, and yesterday, I posted a video about the match between Wilder and Zhang Zhilei, which has replaced the previous match between Beterbiev and Bivol as the main event of the night. I posted an opinion that Zhang Zhilei was the first person in Chinese martial arts history to make headlines. Considering that this video has been played nearly 300,000 times on the whole network, I don't want to mislead everyone, so today I want to make a clarification, and I want to clarify two points.
The first point is that Zhang Zhilei is the first person in the history of Chinese martial arts to make headlines in the main event, which is actually not rigorous. Because strictly speaking, Zhang Zhi was the first person in Chinese boxing to make a main event, and he also made a main event against Joyce (2 fights). It's just that this time Zhang Zhilei and Wilder led the main game, which was a real main game. Because the quality of the other fighters in this competition is very high, many of them are famous fighters, you say Dubois, you say Hrgovic, you say Bivol, and Beterbiev who retired. Being able to make headlines in the main event among fighters of these levels is a recognition of Zhang's identity and commercial value.
The second point I want to clarify is that the first person in the history of Chinese martial arts to make headlines in the main event was not Zhang Zhilei but Zhang Weili. It was at the 2019 UFC Shenzhen that Zhang Weili knocked out Andrade in 42 seconds to win the UFC women's strawweight title, which was the first time in Chinese martial arts history that a Chinese fighter made headlines in the main event. Of course, that bout wasn't particularly high, because it was a UFC fight night match, not a UFC digital fight. There is still a difference between a fight night match and a digital match. Therefore, the main event of Zhang Zhilei and Wild should be the first time for a Chinese player to lead the main event of a major competition, which is the most accurate. I hope the previous video will not mislead everyone.