UFC Women’s Strawweight queen Weili Zhang says that the comments made by Joanna Jedrzejczyk making fun of the coronavirus on social media left her angry.
Jedrzejczyk posted a picture on her Instagram in January, which she has since removed. The picture showed the two women’s fighters on a poster, with Jedrzejczyk wearing a gas mask. This angered Zhang, including many in the MMA community who felt like joking about the coronavirus was inappropriate, considering how many people around the world have died from the virus.
In a recent media day interview ahead of UFC 248, Zhang admitted that she was really angry at Jedrzejczyk’s coronavirus joke, and explained why the joke was so inappropriate.
“I was really angry about that, especially since she’s making jokes about the outbreak, and making jokes about our nation, our country. Because a lot of died from this coronavirus, a lot of families lost their members around the world, lots of kids lost their parents and became orphans. It’s a very tragic moment for all the Chinese people, but not only the Chinese people but all the people around the world. And she’s making jokes on that? It really, really made me irritated,” Zhang said.
“It’s probably because of the cultural difference. In Chinese culture, we don’t laugh at people who are suffering. We help them, we help them up, we build them up. But I don’t know about her. I’m just really angry about it.”
Zhang will get her chance to make Jedrzejczyk answer for her comments this weekend when the two meet in the Octagon in co-main event of UFC 248. Some fans are left worried that Zhang might be too emotionally invested in this fight. She recently detailed her emotional 3-week journey from China to US, which included switching camps on a number of occasions in preparation for UFC 248.
This article first appeared on CLOSEDGUARDMEDIA.com on 5th March, 2020.
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