One of the biggest fights of the year in mixed martial arts takes place on Thursday night when Jose Aldo fights Manny Gamburyan for the featherweight champion of the world. But the fight that could be the most significant bout of the year will happen a few hours earlier on the same World Extreme Cagefighting card, and it will be largely overlooked and maybe not even shown on the television broadcast.
That fight features China’s Zhang Tie Quan stepping into the cage to take on an American named Pablo Garza, and it represents a major opportunity for American MMA to break into the Chinese market.
Every American company is intrigued by the possibilities of expanding into China, and Zuffa (parent company of the WEC and UFC) is no different. And while it’s not realistic to think Zhang could do for MMA what Yao Ming did for basketball, Zhang knows that if he succeeds on the American stage, he could have a huge impact on the growth of the sport in the world’s most populous nation.