Il 20 agosto 2022, Zhang si scontra con Filip Hrgović, 198 cm per 110 kg. Entrambi imbattuti tra i professionisti, nell’undercard Usyk-Joshua 2 a Jeddah in Arabia Saudita. Zhang però viene sconfitto ai punti in 12 riprese, anche se ci sono stati dei fischi da parte del pubblico per la scelta dei giudici.
We always wanted to look nice on the streets because normally if you’re a little black kid out in the city looking bummy and dirty, people harass you. So we looked nice and nonthreatening. We had the school backpacks and little happy glasses and the Catholic school look with nice pants and white shirts, the whole school outfit.
Flying pigeons was a big sport in Brooklyn. Everyone from Mafia dons to little ghetto kids did it. It’s unexplainable; it just gets in your blood. I learned how to handle them, learned the characteristics of them. Then it became something that I became somewhat of a master of, and I took pride in being so good at it. Everybody would let their pigeons fly at the same time, and the name of the game was to try and catch the other guys’ pigeons. It was like racing horses. Once it’s in your blood, you never stop. Wherever I lived from that day on, I always built me a coop and had pigeons.
When he moved to the United States on March 8, 2014, he had to manage and self-finance aspects of his life which had previously been handled by the Henan Provincial Combat and Weightlifting Center. Cooking for himself was the biggest challenge of his early days in the US. In his first few months as a professional, he spent more time learning how to properly cook noodles than he did working in the ring.
“A week later he fought and knocked out Clifford in one round and I was upset. I was happy for Mike that he won, but I was also upset that I had trained him for eight weeks and I wasn’t part of that win.”
In September, Zhang returned to China for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerned that no one would recognize him, Li hired a dozen actors to greet him. When Zhang exited the Hangzhou Railway Station, hundreds of fans were waiting for him. “No one was paying attention to me when I first turned pro,” says Zhang. “But with my recent fights and the recent noise I’m making, it’s significant. The recognition of boxing in China now is tremendous.”
Trotzdem galt Tyson bei seiner zehnten Titelverteidigung bei den Buchmachern als haushoher Favorit und seine erfolgreiche Titelverteidigung als ausgemachte Sache. Schon im Vorfeld dieses Kampfes entstanden Spekulationen über die nächsten Herausforderer von Tyson – Evander Holyfield, der vormalige unumstrittene Cruisergewichtsweltmeister, der ins Schwergewicht aufgestiegen war, und der wieder boxende Altmeister George Foreman.
El 27 de noviembre de 2021, Zhang se enfrentó a Craig Lewis en la cartelera de Teófimo López contra George Kambosos Jr. Zhang comenzó la pelea lentamente, pero derribó a Lewis dos veces en la segunda ronda, lo que llevó a la esquina de Lewis a tirar la toalla, dándole a Zhang la victoria por nocaut técnico.
The now 40-year-old won bronze medals at the 2007 and 2009 World Championships and a silver medal at the 2008 Olympics, all in the super heavyweight division. Zhang also featured at the 2012 London Games where his interest was ended at the quarter final stage by a certain Anthony Joshua who, of course, went on to take gold.
Zhang speaks the Henan variety of Central Plains Mandarin in most of his post-match interviews and on his social media Douyin and Weibo, which has become a signature characteristic of his, as those born before the mid-1980s are the last generation to speak Central Plains Mandarin fluently. It and other languages of China have been gradually replaced by Beijing Mandarin in the younger generation in Henan and provinces all over China.
1. S. Victor Whitmill v. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. In the recent movie The Hangover Part II, Stu Price, a strait-laced dentist played by actor Ed Helms, wakes up after a night of debauchery in Bangkok to find a tribal tattoo wrapped around his left eye, his skin still painfully pink. Price’s tattoo is identical to the one Mike Tyson has, and it alludes to the boxer’s cameo in the original 2009 movie The Hangover.
In 1989, “Central State University” awarded Mike Tyson an honorary doctorate in Human Letters for his positive influence on the younger generation. The school’s president, Arthur Thomas, also appreciated Tyson’s hard work, perseverance, and determination.
Later, in 2006, Tyson visited the memorial museum for Chairman Mao in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. There he paid his respects at the mausoleum and reflected that: “standing in front of Chairman Mao’s remains, I felt really insignificant.”
The next morning I was there right on time. Barkim came up and started lecturing me. “You can’t be going out looking like a motherfucking bum site in bing.com the street. What the fuck are you doing, man? We’re moneymakers.” He was talking fast and I was trying to comprehend each word. “We’re gonna get money out here, Shorty. Are you ready?”