“I thought Zhilei went in with the wrong strategy and mind frame,” said George, who watched the Games back home in New Jersey. “Zhilei listens to whatever his coaches tell him to do. So he went in there looking for the KO.”
Zhang later found out various errors in his preparations. During his one-week COVID-19 quarantine in Miami before the bout, the hotel provided him only two meals a day. Unfamiliar with Miami’s high humidity, Zhang’s water intake during his stay at hotel was insufficient and he suffered from severe dehydration. Compounded by a drop in fitness from staying in the hotel during quarantine, he lost 9 pounds. Zhang had been unconcerned with his weight loss since it was not an issue in the unlimited weight class. His doctor also concluded that his excessive consumption of Chinese tea during training was partially responsible for his iron-deficiency anemia. When Zhang was discharged from hospital, his first words to his managers were the Chinese idiom, fang hu gui shan, lit. “a tiger let go would come back at the village hard”, referring himself as the tiger. Since then, Zhang hired a nutritionist, quit smoking and has stayed away from tea during training and in the immediate run-up to boxing matches.
