UFC CEO Dana White has announced the first title fight for UFC 300.
White teased some fight announcements for UFC 300 on Tuesday but ended up pushing it back until Wednesday. Taking to his Instagram, White announced that Zhang Weili will defend her strawweight title against Yan Xiaonan at UFC 300, which goes down on April 13 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The UFC CEO also revealed that he will announce two more fights for UFC 300 on Thursday.
Zhang Weili (24-3) is coming off her first defense – of her second reign – of her strawweight title back at UFC 292 in August as she scored a one-sided decision over Amanda Lemos. Weili reclaimed the belt in the fight prior, as she submitted Carla Esparza. To earn the title shot, Weili scored a highlight-reel KO win over Joanna Jedrzejczyk to snap her two-fight losing streak.
Before the win over Jedrzejczyk, Weili suffered back-to-back losses to Rose Namajunas to lose her strawweight title. The 34-year-old won the strawweight title for the first time in 2019 with a 42-second TKO over Jessica Andrade and defended it once by split decision against Jedrzejczyk before losing it to Namajuns.
Yan Xiaonan (17-3 and one No Contest) is on a two-fight winning streak and scored a first-round KO win over Jessica Andrade back in May to earn the title shot. Before that, she scored a majority decision win over Mackenzie Dern to snap her two-fight losing skid as she lost a majority decision to Marina Rodriguez and was TKO’d by Esparza.
Xiaonan is ranked second at strawweight and is 8-2 in the UFC. She holds notable wins over Angela Hill, Karolina Kowalkiewicz, and Claudia Gadelha. UFC 300 will also mark her first chance at becoming the strawweight champion.
UFC 300 is as follows:
- Zhang Weili vs. Yan Xiaonan
- Jiri Prochazka vs. Aleksandar Rakic
- Charles Oliveira vs. Arman Tsarukyan
- Calvin Kattar vs. Aljamain Sterling
- Bo Nickal vs. Cody Brundage
