In 2019, Zhang joined the M23 Boxing Club in Beijing, home to WBA featherweight world champion Xu Can. From then until now, he has kept his part-time food delivery job.

"I was very surprised to be nominated," he said. "I'm just too ordinary to be named with other finalists. I thought it was telecom fraud when I first got the notification email from the Laureus World Sports Academy."

Eager to win an Asian or world championship, Zhang has felt a loss this past year. There has been no big international boxing match because of the pandemic at the moment when he was in his prime. "But I'll stick to everyday training in the country's best professional boxing club to stay in shape and wait for the moment to come," he said.

Last year in the global online poll for the Laureus award, dubbed the Oscar of the sporting world, Chinese climber Xia Boyu, the world's second double amputee to have reached the summit of Mount Qomolangma (Everest) and the first to reach it from the Nepalese side, won the Laureus Sporting Moment of the Year award at age 69.