In a world of gimmicks, neon tights, and promo scripts read through clenched jaws, Zeda Zhang walked in like a fist through drywall—raw, unvarnished, and radiating danger. She didn’t need to scream catchphrases or gyrate for the camera. Her body language said it all: “I’ve fought real people. In cages. You’re just wearing boots and pretending.” And in many ways, that made Julia Ho—known to the squared circle as Zeda Zhang—one of the most intriguing women to lace up boots in the last decade.
Before she threw forearms in Orlando or stared down opponents on MLW Fusion, she was choking out amateurs in dank MMA gyms. Her first fight came in 2011 against Betty Huck, and it didn’t look like a debut. It looked like a woman unloading a decade’s worth of frustration onto a heavy bag with a pulse. She won that night. Then she won again a year later, this time via rear naked choke, the clean poetry of finality. That was it—two and done. But Zeda wasn’t done fighting. She just traded the cage for the ring, the Octagon for the squared circle, and brought the same storm with her.
WWE signed her in 2017, sliding her into NXT’s crowded pipeline of hopefuls and heartbreaks. For some, it’s developmental. For others, it’s purgatory. Zeda stood out—not because she shouted loudest or looked like a centerfold, but because she moved like a real fighter. On July 13, 2017, she stepped into the first-ever Mae Young Classic and ran face-first into Shayna Baszler, another ex-MMA wrecking machine. Zeda lost in the first round, but there’s no shame in falling to Baszler—only in folding. Zeda didn’t fold.
Over the next year, she made the NXT rounds—house shows, dark matches, televised bumps. They let her hang around but never gave her the wheel. On June 2, 2018, WWE cut her loose. Most wrestlers take that moment and disappear. Zeda did what fighters do—she trained harder and found another ring.
After WWE, she headed east—far east. Oriental Wrestling Entertainment, a Chinese promotion run by Cima, opened its doors. Zeda walked through them and found something closer to what she was looking for: ring time, respect, and the hard-earned clout of paying dues outside the machine. There, she sharpened her offense and expanded her style. She didn’t just want to fight anymore—she wanted to tell stories in between the headlocks and haymakers.
Then came Major League Wrestling in 2019, the start of something new not just for her, but for the promotion itself. MLW had never had a women’s division before. They needed a flag-bearer. Zeda became that flag. The first woman signed. The tip of the spear. She debuted against the mysterious “Spider Lady”—later unmasked as Priscilla Kelly—in a match that ended in disqualification but served its purpose: the division had teeth now. Zeda had drawn first blood.
MLW should’ve been her proving ground, her real home. But wrestling has a way of shifting tectonic plates beneath your feet. Promises get made, then forgotten. Pushes stall. Gimmicks get handed out like party favors. Zeda, ever the nomad, kept moving forward.
In 2021, All Elite Wrestling called. AEW, the new haven for indie icons and television-savvy rebels, seemed like a good fit. Zeda showed up on AEW Dark, the promotion’s YouTube proving ground, and went to war with Thunder Rosa. It was a losing effort, but again—no shame in falling to Thunder Rosa, one of the most legitimate badasses to walk through that company’s doors.
Six months later, she returned for another AEW Dark match—this time against Toni Storm. Same result. But the fight was never about the record for Zeda. It was about presence, survival, evolution. She didn’t walk into AEW looking for approval. She walked in looking for opportunity—and a chance to make every other woman in the locker room think twice before calling her “just a martial artist.”
Because Zeda’s always been more than a crossover act. She’s not some “MMA novelty” trying to learn the ropes. She’s someone who knows how to cut her teeth in one world and sharpen them in another. You don’t bounce from the UFC feeder system to NXT to China to MLW to AEW if you’re a tourist. You do it because you’ve got nowhere else to go—and you know how to fight like hell to stay.
What separates Zeda Zhang isn’t her resume—it’s the grit tattooed on her soul. The business never coddled her. She didn’t have the luxury of a second-generation name or a main roster rocket strapped to her back. She earned every bump, every booking, every minute of screen time by surviving, adapting, and refusing to be sidelined.
In a world full of blondes with catchphrases, Zeda Zhang is something much rarer: a fighter who didn’t leave her fight in the cage. She’s still swinging. Still clawing. Still standing.
And sometimes, just standing is the win.