{"id":29471,"date":"2025-08-29T05:27:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T09:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/sin-categoria\/walker-knocks-out-zhang-in-shanghai-surprise-at-ufc-fight-night-5\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T05:27:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T09:27:11","slug":"walker-knocks-out-zhang-in-shanghai-surprise-at-ufc-fight-night-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/mma\/walker-knocks-out-zhang-in-shanghai-surprise-at-ufc-fight-night-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Walker Knocks Out Zhang in Shanghai: Surprise at UFC Fight Night"},"content":{"rendered":"In an event that marked the UFC’s return to China after six years, Johnny Walker surprised Zhang Mingyang with a stunning knockout in the main event of UFC Fight Night in Shanghai.\n\n

Walker Ruins Mingyang’s Party<\/h2>\n\nWalker, after a streak of two consecutive knockout losses, achieved an impressive victory over the Chinese light heavyweight. The TKO in the second round by the 33-year-old Brazilian fighter ended a streak of 12 consecutive victories for Zhang, who had not lost an MMA fight since 2019 and had not seen a second round since 2018.\n\n\n
\"Johnny<\/figure>\n\n\nJohnny Walker’s TKO in the second round at the UFC Fight Night main event in Shanghai ended Zhang Mingyang’s 12-fight winning streak.<\/em>\n\nZhang dominated the first round, connecting significant blows and putting Walker on the defensive. However, Walker reacted in the second round with a different strategy, focusing on calf kicks. An effective kick visibly affected Zhang, followed by a second that knocked down the powerful fighter, who was coming off a streak of nine consecutive knockouts in the first round. Walker (22-9, 1 NC) took advantage of the situation and finished the fight with ground-and-pound at 2:37 of the second round.\n\n\n

My kick is incredible, right?<\/p>Johnny Walker<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\nWalker also briefly addressed the crowd in Chinese and showed respect for Zhang (19-7).\n\n\n

A tough fighter from China, with many consecutive victories. It’s a very good experience to fight against a very tough guy. As you can see, I’m resilient. I took some hits today and kept going, and then I got it. This is MMA. Incredible, right?<\/p>Johnny Walker<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\nWalker, although not ranked by ESPN, is ranked number 13 in the official UFC rankings. Zhang is one place below him.\n\n

Sterling Outperforms Ortega in the Co-Main Event<\/h2>\n\nThe co-main event, a clash between ranked featherweights, took place at a catchweight of 153 pounds due to Brian Ortega’s inability to make the division’s weight limit (146 pounds).\n\n

Despite the agreed-upon weight, Ortega couldn’t resist Aljamain Sterling, who took a unanimous decision after five dominant rounds (50-45, 50-45, 50-45).<\/p>\n\nSterling (25-5), former bantamweight champion, proved to be too fast for Ortega (16-5, 1 NC), who only landed 7% of his strikes (2 of 28) in the first round.\n\nSterling, ranked number 9 in ESPN’s 145-pound rankings, secured his second victory in his last three fights, after losing his title in 2023, a defeat that ended a nine-fight winning streak. For Ortega, ranked number 4, it was his second consecutive loss and the fifth in his last seven fights.\n\n\n

Pavlovich Defeats Cortes-Acosta<\/h2>\n\n\nThe fight card also included a heavyweight clash in the ESPN rankings, where Sergei Pavlovich, number 6, won in the third round against Waldo Cortes-Acosta (30-27, 29-28, 29-28), number 9. Pavlovich has won eight of his last 10 fights, but lost to champion Tom Aspinall less than two years ago.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an event that marked the UFC’s return to China after six years, Johnny Walker surprised Zhang Mingyang with a stunning knockout in the main event of UFC Fight Night in Shanghai. Walker Ruins Mingyang’s Party Walker, after a streak of two consecutive knockout losses, achieved an impressive victory over the Chinese light heavyweight. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[7674,4812,228,7675],"class_list":{"0":"post-29471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-johnny-walker","9":"tag-shanghai","10":"tag-ufc","11":"tag-zhang-mingyang"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}