Fri, Oct 01, 2010 page19

• Zhang Tiequan hopes to lead Chinese wave into mixed martial art

  • AP, BEIJING
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  When Zhang Tiequan saw a mixed martial arts bout on television five years ago, it was love at first fight.

  “I really admired the skill sets, and it reminded me of traditional Chinese combat movements, so I thought it was a perfect fit for me,” Zhang said through a translator.

  The 25-year-old Chinese martial artist and wrestler immediately got to work learning the skills he saw on TV, embarking down a path that led him this week to the suburbs of Denver, Colorado, where he was to make history in the octagon last night.

  When Zhang faces Pablo Garza at WEC 51 in Broomfield, Colorado, he’ll become the first Chinese-born MMA fighter to compete in North America with the industry-leading UFC, which owns the lighter-weight World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC) promotion.

  Zhang is certain he won’t be the last, given the UFC’s determination to capitalize on the sport’s burgeoning popularity in a country rediscovering its rich martial arts heritage. As China further opens its athletic endeavors to the world following the Beijing Olympics, Chinese athletes increasingly are participating in boxing and martial arts, which were discouraged or overtly banned during the Cultural Revolution.

  “As a country, they want their athletes to come to America, and vice versa,” WEC general manager Reed Harris said. “Once this sport really grows and develops, I believe they’ll be able to compete as well as any country. In the next 10 or 20 years, this is certainly going to become a big deal.”

  Zhang loved climbing and wrestling as a kid in Inner Mongolia, and he trained in both Mongolian wrestling and Greco-Roman skills before moving into sanshou, the Chinese hand-to-hand combat sport also known as sanda and usually described as kickboxing with throws.

  Zhang competed near his home before moving to Xi-an with his coach, Zhao Xuejun, and eventually channeling his passion into MMA.

  While Zhang worked on his game, the UFC began looking for fighters just like him. UFC president Dana White and co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta decided to make a move on China, eager to put their product into the huge market cultivated by the NBA and nearly every other major North American sport.

  China has native MMA promotions, but nothing on the UFC’s scale, and the sport’s public profile is still relatively small. The UFC recently hired Mark Fischer, a former NBA executive who’s working to get the UFC’s fights on regular television in China.

  “I see China in the same place as we were in the US back in the late ‘90s, where this thing is kind of gaining some steam and picking up, and these shows are starting to do better,” Harris said.

  Zhang was discovered by Sean Shelby, the WEC’s matchmaker and a long-time sanshou student tasked by the UFC with finding China’s best fighters. Shelby crisscrossed the country for three weeks, starting on the northern border and moving all the way down to Hong Kong on his fact-finding mission.

  “The thing that amazed me was the spirit of the Chinese people and the Chinese athlete,” Shelby said. “There’s absolutely no quit in them, and that’s something you just can’t teach an athlete. You either have it or you don’t. It’s the intangible. When they have the jiujitsu to go with the sanda, there’s no telling how far they can go.”

  Shelby attended a local fight card and saw wildly differing levels of athletes — including far more skilled heavyweights than he ever imagined — but when Shelby scouted the Chinese Top Team, a Beijing outfit run by a Brazilian coach, he immediately liked Zhang’s toughness, his advanced kickboxing skills and his 16-0 record.

  “If you’re going to be a successful MMA fighter, you have to be a good Greco-Roman wrestler,” Shelby said. “They decide where the fight goes ... If you have that kind of resume, you’re set up to do very well, no matter where you come from. Chinese or not, he’s got potential.”

  The WEC formally signed Zhang last month, promoting him with the nickname “The Mongolian Wolf,” and recently moved him to Colorado to finish training.

  “Colorado is so wonderful,” Zhang said with a smile. “The outdoor life is great and reminds me of my hometown. I go running and see all kinds of animals along the path. I saw a fox, but no wolf.”

  Shelby has identified several more Chinese fighters who could be added to the promotion. He thinks Chinese MMA will grow along with a proliferation of schools teaching Brazilian jiujitsu, the grappling and ground-fighting discipline that’s so important in MMA.
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