UFC 235: Jones vs. Smith - Predictions and Picks

#4 Tecia Torres vs. Weili Zhang

Tecia Torres has become the toughest gatekeeper in the 115lbs division

This match of Strawweight contenders should be interesting, as it pits a hot prospect against possibly the best gatekeeper in the division. At 29, it’s likely that Tecia Torres has now peaked as a fighter, and so after losses to Rose Namajunas (the current champ), Joanna Jedrzejczyk (the former champ) and Jessica Andrade (the next title challenger) it doesn’t seem like she’ll ever truly contend for the title. That’s fine though, as she could easily spend years in the UFC knocking off potential contenders looking to break into that area.

Weili Zhang is definitely one of those fighters. She’s 2-0 in the UFC thus far with impressive wins over tough opposition – Danielle Taylor and Jessica Aguilar – and appears to be China’s best hope for a UFC champion in the near future. At 5’4” she’s 3 inches taller than Torres, and appears to have completely well-rounded skills – of her 18 career wins, 9 have come by KO or TKO while 7 have come by submission.

Footage on her shows a pretty wild striker, as she wades in throwing punching combinations and plenty of spinning kicks usually with full power, before looking to muscle her opponents down from the clinch. It’s an interesting match for Torres, who dealt well with Michelle Waterson’s karate-based offense by using her wrestling and boxing – can she do the same to Zhang?

The thing that makes this fight tricky to pick is Torres’s lack of striking power. She’s a pretty good technical striker who throws strikes in combinations and with tremendous speed, but she just doesn’t knock people out – of her 10 professional wins, 9 of them have gone the distance with the lone finish being her 2017 submission of Julianna Lima. And notably, she actually outstruck Jessica Andrade at times during their fight, but simply couldn’t hurt the Brazilian while she was stunned numerous times in return.

Zhang might be wild on the feet, but she clearly throws with power – and while Torres is clearly tough as she lasted the distance with both Andrade and Jedrzejczyk, the judges obviously favor harder-hitting strikes as opposed to a lot of volume with minimal damage. I’d say Torres should look to grapple with Zhang instead, but even that might be tricky given the Chinese fighter’s venomous ground game.

The only thing stopping me picking Zhang comfortably here, to be honest, is the fact that outside of a loss on The Ultimate Fighter to Randa Markos, Torres has never been stopped and she definitely knows how to win – she could certainly grind out three rounds over Zhang in the same way she did to Waterson in December 2017. But that’s contingent on Zhang’s ceiling being lower than Andrade, Jedrzejczyk and Namajunas – and Torres still being able to fight to that level after 2 straight losses.

I’m going to take a risk and go with Zhang, although I don’t think she’ll stop Torres and it will likely be a super-close fight – I wouldn’t be surprised if the big moments in the fight belong to ‘Magnum’ but the judges decide to go for Torres based on more cage control.

The Pick: Zhang via split decision