Fight Facts: UFC Fight Night 157

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Fight Facts is a breakdown of all of the interesting information and Octagon oddities on every card, with some puns, references and portmanteaus to keep things fun. These deep stat dives delve into the numbers, providing historical context and telling the stories behind those numbers.

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TOTAL NUMBER OF UFC FIGHTS: 5,295
TOTAL NUMBER OF UFC EVENTS: 491

The Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday visited mainland China for the third time with UFC Fight Night 157 in Shenzhen, bringing with it a card full of interesting fights and results with massive implications for hometown fans. The event featured the beginning of a new era, a winning streak that would impress “Mega Megu” and the first UFC fighter to ever win and lose with an anaconda choke.

CHINA POWER: Chinese fighters found great success at UFC Fight Night 157, going 5-1 throughout the course of the night. Only Yanan Wu suffered a defeat, as she dropped a split decision to Mizuki Inoue.

ON THE MAP: Weili Zhang became the first Chinese fighter in UFC history to win a championship. She is not the first fighter from Asia to do so, however, as flyweight queen Valentina Shevchenko was born in Kyrgyzstan.

BLITZKRIEGED: Zhang leveled Jessica Andrade with punches, elbows and knees to win the belt in only 42 seconds. That knockout is the third-quickest in UFC women’s championship history, with only Ronda Rousey holding faster stoppages at 16 seconds over Alexis Davis and at 34 seconds over Bethe Correia.

THAT STRAWWEIGHT SPEED: Zhang’s knockout was also the second-fastest in women’s strawweight history, behind only Poliano Botelho’s 33-second body kick knockout of Syuri Kondo at UFC Fight Night 129 in 2018.

CYBORGIAN IF YOU ASK ME: After losing her MMA debut, “Magnum” has won her next 20, putting together a longer winning streak than any other active female fighter in a major MMA organization.

MEGA MAGNUM: Zhang’s 20-fight winning streak is among the longest of any female fighter in MMA history, behind the likes of Megumi Fujii’s 22-fight tear. Cristiane Justino won 20 fights without a loss spanning from 2005 to 2018, although she had a result overturned to a no-contest after testing positive for stanozolol.

WRECKING WEILI: Seventeen of Zhang’s 20 career victories have come inside the distance. This was her 10th knockout.

AN UNFAMILIAR SENSATION: The last time Zhang lost a fight was in November 2013. At that time, 10 of the other 21 fighters on the UFC Fight Night 157 card had not yet made their professional debuts.

WHERE SHE STOPS, NOBODY KNOWS: Andrade held the strawweight belt for 112 days before losing it to Zhang. That title reign is the shortest of any champion that was not stripped or did not vacate his or her throne since Holly Holm. “The Preacher’s Daughter” held the bantamweight strap for 111 days before giving it up to Miesha Tate.

NOT-SO-SWEET SIXTEEN: Albeit in a losing effort, Andrade extended her record for the most bouts in UFC women’s divisional history with 16.

WINNER BY A HAIR: With nine seconds left in the fight, Jingliang Li finished Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos with strikes. Of the 16 fights throughout organizational history that were scheduled for three rounds and ended in the last 10 seconds, 37.5 percent of those stoppages have occurred at welterweight, far more than any other weight class.

TONYCONDA: By tapping Jun Yong Park with a second-round anaconda choke, Anthony Hernandez became the third middleweight in UFC history to pull off this type of maneuver.

ANACONDO, ANACONDON’T: Hernandez previously tapped to an anaconda choke at UFC Fight Night 144 in February. With his submission win over Park, he became the first fighter in promotional history to ever win and lose with that move.

MY NAME IS MUD(AERJI): In taking a dominant decision over Andre Soukhamthath, Su Mudaerji went the distance for the first time in his 16-fight career. All 11 of his prior wins came before the final bell, while each of his four losses ended by tapout.

IT’S 3 A.M. I MUST BE FIGHTING: According to ESPN Stats and Info, the card opener between Karol Rosa and Lara Fritzen Procopio combined for the most significant strikes in the history of the UFC women’s bantamweight division with 336. This smashed the previous record (294) held by Andrade and Rosi Sexton at UFC Fight Night 30 in 2013.

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN: Coming into UFC Fight Night 157, Zaleski dos Santos had never been knocked out (26 fights), Procopio (six fights) and Khadis Ibragimov (eight fights) had never been defeated and Derrick Krantz had never competed outside of the continental United States (35 fights).

AND MAYBE WE’LL COME BACK: Ever since his sophomore effort inside the Octagon, Zaleski dos Santos has been accompanied by Europe’s “The Final Countdown”. His loss to Li was the first since he started using the track.

KRANTERA: Walking out to “10’s” by Pantera, Krantz dropped a decision. Throughout UFC history, Pantera songs have been used eight recorded times, and none of those eight have ever been followed by that fighter winning.

Sherdog contributing editor Jay Pettry is an attorney and a statistician. Writing about MMA since he started studying the “Eminem Curse” in 2012 and working for Vice Sports and Combat Docket along the way, he put together many fight result and entrance music databases to better study the sport. You can find him on twitter at @jaypettry.