Hailaierke emerged from his corner in a southpaw pose, before abruptly switching to an orthodox stance inside the octagonal ring in the central Chinese city of Lüliang. Whether that sudden shift befuddled his opponent is unclear, but just 40 seconds later Shang Zhifa was sprawled on the canvas, felled by a vicious right hand.
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It was a first-round knockout that won Hailaierke the 1 million rmb ($135,000) top prize at the Dec. 28 flyweight Bounty Event held by JCK, China’s top mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion. It also came against all the odds. Hailaierke was only drafted into the main bout after Shang’s original opponent turned up overweight. The respected MMA website Tapology.com assessed Hailaierke’s pre-fight chances at 0%.
Yet Hailaierke possessed a secret weapon that is fast becoming headline news across the increasingly popular world of Asian MMA. In a victory video posted to social media, clutching bricks of prize money and wearing the white-studded “hero’s sash” of China’s Yi ethnic minority, the 25-year-old thanked “all my Yi compatriots for supporting me.”
China’s Yi people number just 9 million scattered across the nation of 1.3 billion yet they are punching (and kicking) far above their weight in the pugilistic arts. Of the seven bouts at JCK’s Bounty Event, four were won by Yi. The rest of the card was made up of ethnic Kazakhs and Russians with the defeated Shang among only three fighters belonging to China’s majority Han ethnicity, which accounts for some 92% of the national population. In addition, two Yi already fight in the apex UFC promotion.
The disproportionate success of Yi in Chinese MMA is a curiosity that is galvanizing interest in ethnic minority culture amongst sports fans as well as resurgent pride within those communities themselves. Following his victory, Hailaierke returned to a hero’s welcome in the Yi heartland of Liangshan, set amid the rippling hills where China’s southwestern Sichuan and Yunnan provinces meet. Pigs were slaughtered in his honor, he was festooned with floral garlands, and hundreds young and old thronged the dirt streets to catch a glimpse of the conquering warrior’s return.
“I got into fighting because the Yi are a society of heroes,” Hailaierke tells TIME. “I wear the Yi heroes’ sash because it symbolizes valor and strength.”
Indeed, the Yi have long had a fearsome reputation which goes some way to explain their role as the rising force of Chinese MMA—one that is casting the nation’s oft-maligned ethnic minorities in a new light. “Most of the Yi people live in the mountains of Sichuan, but they have many excellent fighters,” says Chinese MMA analyst Hou Yu, who runs the popular “Punch of the Big Dipper” social media channel. “Their ethnicity is also proud of them, and more and more Chinese fans are also starting to recognize these minority athletes.”
It’s recognition that stands in contrast to the mystery that has long swathed the Yi. During World War II, an American pilot crash-landed close to Liangshan, where he is believed to have been captured by the Yi and turned into a kind of god-slave. When Mao Zedong’s ragtag communist rebels underwent their Long March across China in 1935 they passed through the territory of the Yi, who would raid and loot their caravans until revolutionary General Liu Bocheng secured safe passage by drinking chicken’s blood with the Yi chieftain.
Still, there remained an “antagonistic relationship” between the Yi and Han, says June Teufel Dreyer, a professor specializing in China’s ethnic minorities at the University of Miami. “The Yi didn’t have needles but recognized immediately that they were useful. They would have to trade, say, 10 chickens for one needle, and they rightfully viewed that as exploitation, and so they didn’t like the Han very much.” That animosity cut both ways, with the prevailing Chinese view disparaging the Yi and other minorities as “dirty and a step below the Han in humanity,” says Dreyer.
Indeed, China’s ethnic minorities have often chafed under Beijing’s rule. Article 4 of the constitution of the People’s Republic theoretically guarantees equality for all its 56 ethnic groups, though in reality the Chinese Communist Party rules according to a Han Chinese orthodoxy, which claims a direct lineage from the early Yellow River basin tribes and alone defines the national vision.
In recent years, Beijing has enforced curbs on local language in Inner Mongolia, corralled some 2.8 million Tibetans into urban work groups under the guise of “poverty alleviation,” and unleashed a campaign of extrajudicial detention and cultural assimilation against predominantly Muslims Uyghurs and Kazakhs that that the U.S. and other nations have labeled genocide. “The party is happy to celebrate minorities’ achievements as long as it doesn’t conflict with what it wants, which is control of ethnic minority culture,” says Dreyer.
Little wonder Yi and other minority athletes always celebrate their identity within the parameters of being part of the great Chinese nation. When ethnic Chinese Kazakhs compete in neighboring Kazakhstan, they bond closely with their local counterparts during training, though always make sure to enter the ring wrapped in the red Chinese flag, says Vaughn “Blud” Anderson, a retired Canadian MMA fighter who has been Asia-based for over two decades and today works as a commentator, trainer, and analyst for JCK and other promotions.
“Hans will cheer for a Tibetan or a Yi or Mongolian just as they will for a Han,” says Anderson. “I don’t think China is divided that way. Just so long as there’s nothing that person has done to isolate themselves.”
Of course, winning helps, and today the resurgent Yi are enjoying a cultural renaissance at least amongst Chinese fans of martial arts. Though, in truth, minorities’ dominance of MMA is nothing new.
In ancient times, mixed combat competitions were commonplace in China. Known as Leitai after the raised platform where they were typically held, these no-holds-barred contests combined striking, grappling, and wrestling. Yet the emphasis on Leitai dwindled as modern warfare came to depend more on weaponry than hand-to-hand combat. Instead, Chinese martial arts reverted to traditional striking forms such as shaolin kung fu, which is geared more towards rules-based competition and wowing cinema audiences. That is except in the minority-dominated areas hugging China’s borders—where Mongols, Tibetans, Kazakhs, and the Yi all retained a culture of wrestling.
While the fluid acrobatics of kung fu may look great on camera, in a fight with few rules it’s the grappling styles of wrestling and Brazilian jujitsu that ultimately come out on top. When modern MMA first burst onto the scene in the mid-1990s it was ethnic Mongolian wrestlers that initially dominated in Asia. Today, Kazakhs and Tibetans also feature prominently, alongside the Yi. What links all these groups is a cultural tradition of wrestling as opposed to striking martial arts like kung fu.
So could ethnic Han train like the Yi and be similarly successful? They already are.
When Shi Ming entered the Octagon for the strawweight final of Road to UFC Fight Night in Macau on Nov. 23, few outside her corner believed she would defeat her younger, taller opponent. Indeed, Feng Xiaocan dominated much of the contest, exploiting her longer reach to upset Shi’s rhythm with a string of jabs. But then Shi unleashed a lightning head kick that sent Feng crashing to the canvas. As Feng was carried out on a stretcher straight to a hospital, Shi’s stunning knockout was already going viral around the world, turning the 30-year-old into a global sensation.
“When I walk in the street people recognize me and want to take pictures,” Shi tells TIME. “I’m really happy to meet new friends and to see all the messages supporting me.”
That victory earned Shi a UFC contract that seemed like a faraway dream when she first began training in taekwondo and kickboxing as a teenager. She was always a middling competitor, she concedes, never becoming even a provincial champion, let alone representing her country. But that all changed once she started working with U.S.-Iranian catch wrestling coach Bagher Amanolahi, who as part of Shi’s training regime would take her to compete at traditional Yi “sani” wrestling events in the hills of Yunnan province, where wrestling is an intrinsic part of every village festival.
“I actually went there just for practice,” says Shi. “But it was really difficult for me. Even local farmers, these old women, they are really strong. And while they are not professional, they have taken part in this kind of wrestling since they were maybe five years old, so they have a lot of experience.”
Shi, who by day works as a doctor in the Yunnan capital Kunming, says that the two benefits of being based in the province are the altitude for stamina training and the prevalence of ethnic minorities, allowing her to hone her wrestling skills. “I improved both my wrestling attacks and defense a lot, so I don’t worry too much even if they take me down, because I can get up,” she says. “So my striking also became more powerful.”
But a cultural affinity with wrestling is not the only reason behind the disproportionate representation of China’s ethnic minorities in MMA. The arcane pockets of China’s periphery where the Yi and other minorities live are typically China’s poorest regions, far from the gleaming skyscrapers and bustling ports of Shanghai and Shenzhen.
“As a child I grew up herding cattle and sheep,” says Jimuwusha, a 26-year-old Yi fighter who defeated an ethnic Kazakh from China’s Xinjiang province at JCK’s recent Bounty Event. “I followed cattle and sheep all over the mountains and fields. At eight or nine years old I had to climb one or two mountains a day.”
Hailaierke has similar stories. “From a young age, I lived in a small rural village deep in the mountains,” he says. “I could eat enough food, but there was little money for other things, including school. From the age of 14 or 15, we raise sheep and cattle, or go out to find work in places like construction sites, and then marry young too.”
Professional fighting is a working-class escape across the globe, but whereas in North America and Europe it’s typically deprived cities that prove the most fertile breeding ground, in China the countryside is where people are hungriest. “The population of Shanghai is 30 million people and there’s no real born-and-bred Shanghai fighter,” says Anderson. “It’s about the environment where these guys grow up.”
Shi agrees. “Wealthy kids don’t want to do these kinds of tough sports,” she says. “And poor villages have a lot of kids who are willing to train hard.” She also notes that China’s government plows huge resources into spotting young athletes and training them for glory in international events like the Olympics. But there’s more incentive for kids from deprived backgrounds that perhaps aren’t reaching medal positions to quit sporting academies for the more immediate returns of commercial MMA.
Even those who do achieve glory are making the switch. Yi bantamweight Buhuoyouga began training in boxing, weightlifting, and wrestling in his early teens, eventually winning China’s National Wrestling Championship. Today, the 32-year-old is pound-for-pound the No. 3 ranked MMA fighter across the Asia-Pacific. “In the past, we were relatively poor, and I changed my life through fighting,” he says. “Now I hope to inspire our Yi children.”
And not just Yi. Today, young MMA fans across Asia have begun wearing the Yi hero’s sash to emulate these top stars. Meanwhile, Hou cites the example of the young Tibetan MMA fighter Ze Wang, whose fighting prowess combined with bleach-blond hair and smoldering good looks is inspiring young fans to embrace Tibetan culture.
“Many young fans started to like him and also Tibetan culture,” says Hou. “I hope the cohesion of all ethnic groups can be increased through MMA.”