The fight was close. Razor close. Two of the three cageside judges scored it 48-47, one for each fighter. But the outlier was Eric Colon, who somehow scored it 49-46 for Namajunas, giving her rounds two through five.

While Namajunas clearly won the championship rounds, the case could easily be made for Zhang winning the first three. That’s how Michael Bell saw it, either way, while Doug Crosby gave a tight second round to the champ.

Weili was her typical upbeat self at the post-event press conference, however there is no denying she was putting on a brave face after coming up short again.

“Actually, I’m just so grateful for this opportunity to fight in New York in front of such a big audience, to showcase my skills,” she said. “I was pretty happy training with my coaching team. We can’t really control the outcome of the fight, we just tried to control the effort we put into the fight.”

UFC 268: Zhang sends fans inspirational message after Namajunas loss

After moving her camp from Beijing to the Fight Ready gym in Arizona, under the tutelage of former two-weight UFC champ – and Olympic gold-medal winning wrestler – Henry Cejudo, Zhang was banking on her improved grappling and takedowns to make the difference.

Closing the distance and using the clinch was also key, given how she was caught cold by the American Namajunas with a first-round, head-kick KO in April, surrendering the belt in Jacksonville.

Zhang was the more active fighter in the first three rounds, but the elusive Namajunas showed why she is such a difficult opponent, using her range and height advantage to keep the challenger on her toes. Certainly, trying to get anywhere near Namajunas is not only tough, but dangerous.

The championship rounds are often where champions are made, and Namajunas got significant takedowns in the fourth and fifth, spending most of those final 10 minutes on top of Zhang, who defended well and stayed busy but could not find a way back to her feet.

“In the last round I felt like my arms were quite heavy,” Zhang admitted. “The overall game plan worked well, I think just maybe I did 60 or 70 per cent of what I could. I just feel sorry for the coaches because they have done a tremendous job for me in this training camp.”

Zhang then said she was looking forward to a trilogy with Namajunas, but as White insisted, she’s going to have to notch at least a couple of wins to get back into the conversation this time.

Or maybe she doesn’t have to? The plan going forward is to return to China, then come back to Fight Ready a little earlier for her next fight.

Cejudo certainly seemed willing to welcome her back. “In an eight-week camp, you made tremendous growth,” he posted on Instagram. “It’s been a honour to work with you champion and I know it’s only the beginning of Weili 2.0. Beware because China will rise again.”

China’s rise in the UFC has been stunted, for sure.

When Zhang steamrollered Jessica Andrade to claim the belt in just 42 seconds at UFC Fight Night Shenzhen in August 2019, it was the culmination of a number of overlapping storylines.

Zhang embraced her role as China’s face in the UFC, and also as a conduit. She actively worked to brush up on her English, engaging with American fans, while giving her homeland the star they’d been waiting for, in the country that birthed martial arts.

Zoom ahead a few years and things haven’t quite worked out yet.

A multimillion dollar deal with China Mobile subsidiary Migu was signed in February, with April’s big Jacksonville card geared around Zhang’s second title defence, and the debuts of three UFC China Academy graduates from the Shanghai PI.

White’s announcement of new a Performance Institute in Mexico City, with another planned for Africa, suggest the UFC may be turning its focus to other markets to unearth the next generation of talent, buoyed by the rise to UFC gold of Mexico’s Brandon Moreno, Nigeria’s Israel Adesanya and Kamaru Usman, and Cameroon’s Francis Ngannou.

China’s strict, ongoing Covid-19 restrictions – which have prevented the UFC going back to the mainland for an event since that historic Shenzhen card – could also be a factor, with seemingly no end in sight when it comes to the country reopening to the world.

But there is no denying Zhang is still one of the greatest female fighters in the UFC, and she is far from down and out, or at a crossroads – Saturday night’s gutsy performance against Namajunas proved she belongs, and always has.

After that shock capitulation in Florida, she needed to give a good account of herself, and she did. In a non-title fight, she might even have got the result, though both women would have surely approached things differently if they knew they only had three rounds.

We may have now fully entered the era of “Thug Rose”, but you can bet “Magnum” will reload the chamber, and come again.