In 2018, MMA fighters from China began to make impacts within the MMA stratosphere unlike the sport had ever seen.
ONE Championship strawweight “Panda” Xiong JingNan made history one fateful night in January by becoming the country’s first world champion in a major promotion. The very next year, on home soil, Zhang Weili only needed 42 volatile seconds in her first UFC title opportunity to capture gold of her own.
Thanks to unpredictable worldwide events, 2020 won’t allow for the continuation of this historic trend. But there’s no denying that the championship duo’s Sanda sister, Yan Xiaonan, was on pace to jot her name down in the books once again.
That’s not to say that the first Chinese female UFC fighter ever isn’t still on pace to do so.
Yan’s professional mixed martial arts journey officially sprouted to life in the winter of 2009. Growing up, Yan’s involvement with combat sports came at an early age by taking up the traditional Chinese art of Wushu. Her father’s interest was enough to draw her in at a youthful stage and that only grew over time leading to various other art forms getting incorporated into an inevitably lethal arsenal. One of the most notable skills to have in China is Sanda — a Chinese military based hybrid of kickboxing and boxing that also incorporates ways to take opposition to the ground.
Due to the origin of the art, its addition to her toolbox led Yan Xiaonan to have a reasonable idea in mind for what she might do with it as an adult. And that didn’t happen to be prizefighting on the worldwide largest stage.
“Never,” Yan told MyMMANews with a smile in response to if she ever expected to be a pro fighter growing up, “When I was a child and I started training traditional martial arts I never thought one day I will become a professional fighter fighting overseas.
“I wanted to become a police officer because I practiced martial arts. So I thought I could protect others. But I never thought I’d be a professional martial artist making a living off of this, and going abroad for competing and training.”
Continued: The Blood Quest: Yan Xiaonan and a nation's pursuit of history