Angela Hill on Weili Zhang vs. Joanna Jedrzejczyk

It's a great time in the sport though. There's so much exciting, so many exciting possible matchups. What are you pumped for? Like when you look at the- Like the Straweights? Like the Straweights? Or everything. Or just everyone? Well, Straweights, you have to be paying attention to the title fight next week. Yeah, yeah. Next month, rather. Yeah, no, I'm definitely paying attention to that. Were you surprised when you watched Weili and Jessica András? Not really. The thing is, I was catching András when she would run in. And it wasn't until the third round that I decided to use elbows. And I'm pretty sure I dropped her in the third round. And she popped right back up. But ever since then, I noticed that she would get hit. She would get hit and rock in the Torres fight. Tisha isn't known for having knockout power, crazy hands. But she dropped her like a good like two or three times in the Torres fight. So I could see that that Chen was getting touched. Well you remember the Ioannina J-Check fight. She ate a fuck load of shots in that fight. But it didn't look like she was getting wobbled as much. But maybe she did because like when she came back and fought Tisha, she was like going like wobbly legged like every now and then. Eventually she closed the distance and took her down. But it's like she sacrifices her Chen to get that distance. And like same thing with the Rose fight. She was getting picked apart the entire time sacrificing her head to get in and get the throw or whatever. And then finally like gave out on her in the wailie fight. So I wasn't like super surprised. I mean everyone was surprised. So I won't say that. I did see that coming eventually. Like I'm like eventually someone's going to put her out. Just because it's not just the person's power that she's fighting but it's her pressure is so aggressive and she's coming in so hard. So it's like her force versus the other person's punch when they connect. Like she's knocking herself out essentially. So yeah like I wasn't super surprised. And like that was that was what my what I thought would happen when I fought her. Like I didn't go into that fight thinking oh man it's going to suck. You know I was like dude I can catch her. Like she drops her hands when she comes forward. Like my I can strike going backwards. Like I know I'm going to catch her and like I can put her out because of the way she strikes. So I've always seen that her hands were a bit sloppy even though she's super aggressive. And the fact that she's so aggressive gives her that much success. Like you you can't ignore the fact that she's punching you as much as she is. But it's still like very offensive and like with zero defense in mind. So yeah I wasn't like super surprised when someone finally did drop her. But you know I hadn't really seen that much of Weili Zhang. So I was surprised that she was able to get the title that that fast. Have you ever seen her strength and conditioning routine that she does? No I haven't. Fucking ferocious. That lady goes hard. She goes hard. It's pretty wild. It's pretty wild to watch. It's very inspiring. How do you feel like she matches up with Yohanna? Because that fight is real that's real soon. I think it's going to be a I think it's going to be an even match. I think she has a lot of output. I think she isn't afraid to go to the ground. I saw that when she fought Tisha. They had like a lot of crazy scrambles. She had good reverses for like Tisha's takedown attempts and stuff. And yeah just think it's going to be like she's going to force Yohanna to move and to react more than most people I think. Like as long as she's like I haven't really seen I haven't really paid attention to like how much head movement she has. But I do know that she just throws a lot of volume and wherever the fight goes she seems comfortable. So I've never seen her in a spot where she looks like oh what do I do here you know like you see people freaking out against the cage or freaking out when they get taken down and she seems to flow. She has that athletic flow through everything. So that's the one thing I think she has going for her. But I do think Yohanna's reach is what's made her so dominant. She's a big old girl like watching her fight and draw there was a moment where like she's pushing and draw it up against the cage and she looks like a big old like praying mantis like you know like just like biting someone's head off like and draw it looks like this little thing. So like she's a big girl with a really long reach really long legs and everything. So I think I'm kind of surprised to see her back at 115 because she really struggled. Dude I was too. Well I was going to try to like fill in that last minute. I don't know if you heard but it like kind of upped my like I don't know like props or whatever. When she was about to fight Michelle there were rumors that she wasn't going to make weight and so people were scrambling and then my manager what yeah I think I could talk about that. My manager hopefully fingers crossed. My manager got the call like hey man I'm just worried about this Yohana fight and my manager was like well I bet Angela would take it if you guys wanted to fight and he's like seriously and he's like yeah she's crazy and I was there cornering my teammate Lauren Mueller at the time. So I was there chilling where were we Atlanta I think maybe I forget where it was. It might have been Atlanta but I was there chilling cornering my friend and then my manager calls and he's like hey and it was like that time of the night that you know it's a fight offer. So he was like hey. What time was that? It was like maybe 11 ish or something. Oh so some weirds going on. Yeah yeah it was like 11 p.m. and I was like who? And he's like would you fight Yohana at 125? And I was like fuck yeah. And I was like I was probably walking about 125 at the moment like and if they I think we were talking back or he was talking back and forth and he was like well what about Michelle at 115 he just wanted to know just so he can relay the message. I was like yeah just let me know so I can like cut weight or not cut weight you know. So I was sitting waiting for waiting for the call and then the rumors got like blasted and then people knew my name was in it for some reason. I was just like who is talking you know. But like it went viral and I was and I just leaned into it I was like hey anytime any place let's go and I waited waited and then yeah nothing happened Yohana made weight. I was like damn. Yeah I heard that she wasn't making weight either. Yeah yeah everyone was talking about it and then somehow somebody knew that my name was in the mix like Angela Hill might fill in for Michelle instead of filling for Yohana like and because she was like the name that was that they were promoting for the fight. So they wanted the former champ to get her fight so they were like alright if it comes down to it Angela will fight her at 125. So I was pretty stoked I mean I feel like Yohana does a lot of things and it's similar with my matchup that I have now only she's a lot bigger. Yohana does a lot of things that I've seen a lot of you know in training just like in my in my first years of Muay Thai like she has a very conventional style when it comes to Muay Thai and she's just very good at it. So a fight with Yohana is always something that I've wanted to have just because I felt like it would be something that I've seen before be like I'm not gonna be you know I'm not gonna be afraid of the clinch you know which she's really good at I'm not gonna be afraid of the clinch I'm not gonna be afraid of when an elbow is gonna come because of elbow spart like my entire fight career. So it's like it's like things that I see with her are less scary than a fight with someone that she's beat before like Andrade or or Gedelio or someone like that so. We're gonna learn about her a lot this coming fight like what she's got left yeah because that the transition 25 didn't really work out like shift tank was just a little too much for shift tank it already beat her outside the UFC and beat her again and then it just didn't look like she had the firepower to keep her off her at 125 and then so she goes down to 15 again but we know how hard it was for her to make 15 and that's one of the things that they had said her camp it said about her chin when when she fought Rose like she just couldn't take a shot it was because she was so depleted. So we'll find out cause Weili hits fucking hard. Yeah yeah and she's like I don't know the you know I know is so determined like I feel like she'd kill herself to make way you know like she's just that kind of fighter though yeah you know the long combat sports career when you know and at a certain point in time you got to wonder like when that catches up to you or you know one thing that she was saying that she was in a real bad relationship and there was a giant distraction and now she's done with that and that was a contributing factor to a lot of her losses so we're gonna find out because you know when you go back to like when she fought Jessica Panet she was the scariest woman alive like she would have fucking ferocious yeah when she was the champ and she was lighting everybody on fire she was terrifying yeah she was so aggressive and so technical yeah she also had a lot of fighters who weren't that technically sound sure and striking or at least not confident with their striking yeah you know so when she did fight someone who was good who was actually a better striker than her and Rose like the fact that just the fact that Rose could move laterally you know like Yana was always like a back and forth fighter because that's like her style of very Muay Thai and Rose just moving to the side every now and then or having head movement I think that really fucked her up and like it's hard when you when you fight someone like that for the first time or even spar someone like that for the first time you can't find them you know all your punches miss you gas out you freaking out because you're missing your punches then you're getting countered and it's like a lot to deal with for a straightforward Muay Thai fighter so