UFC 226 is now available on Amazon Prime.
Many mixed martial artists are quite vocal about their desire to stay as active as possible and would prefer to fight as often as four times per year, if not more.
Brian Ortega, on the other hand, has a slightly different philosophy.
“Two good large fights a year is good enough for me,” Ortega said during a recent media call. “Training full on year around is great and I love to stay in shape and always being ready but, you know, I feel sometimes I don’t have a life. All I do is just live in the gym. There’s a lot of time. There’s sacrifice from my family and everyone and pretty much I haven’t had a life in a year man. I’ve just been training, working and just trying to climb to the top. If I got it my way I’d work hard, get two crazy fights in a year and then just relax a little bit.”
Ortega will get one of those “crazy fights” in the UFC 226 co-main event, when he squares off against reigning featherweight champion Max Holloway at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday. “T-City” carries a six-fight UFC winning streak – including a devastating first-round knockout of Frankie Edgar in March – into the bout. That victory came on the heels of back-to-back submission wins over Renato Carneiro and Cub Swanson in 2017 and showed that Ortega is much more than a Brazilian jiu-jitsu specialist with slick grappling skills.
I feel like — because the last before those two, the back-to-back fights pretty much against Moicano and Cub were submissions,” Ortega said. “Everyone’s just looking at the submission part of it but now, you know, with the Frankie [win] it just reminded everyone that I’ve got the stand-up element as well.”
In some of his previous wins, Ortega has started a little slowly. Against Swanson, for example, the Black House representative was losing the battle on the feet before securing a guillotine choke at the 3:22 mark of the second round. That wasn’t the case against Edgar.
“I used to care a little bit more about what the outcome would be and then lately I just, haven’t really cared too much to be honest,” Ortega said. “I just go on there and just do my thing and just leave no worries in there and have fun while I’m in there. That itself just, kind of you know, work its way into these fast starts. Yes man, for me I just stopped caring about the outcome and just going in there and going balls to the wall.”
Of course, whether it’s earlier or later in the fight, Ortega has a reputation for putting his opponents away in the Octagon. None of his first fix UFC foes has made it to the judges’ scorecards.
“When I go in there I don’t go in there to score points…I go in there with just one objective and that’s finish my opponent,” Ortega said. “I really made it a statement when I went to UFC and put myself in that kind of mind-frame where if I’m going to be in this game there should be no decisions.
“For me it’s just this mind switch that happened a long time ago and it just keeps getting better and better with, you know, different opponents. It works differently. You know, some people can last, survive a little bit longer than others and then others, you know, they just fall quicker. For me it’s just my switch is always on.”
As his profile has grown, Ortega has been able to spread the word about his charity organization. Becoming a UFC champion would along help to further those efforts.
“You know, the belt is a selfish goal of mine as in terms of wanting to become the best in the world. For me, if I have the belt pretty much what it means is, you’re at the top of the limelight. When you’re at the top of the limelight you have more eyes that are on you,” he said. “And ultimately, I just want a lot of eyes on me so I can just share my message. I’m trying to just help people out and make the world a better place.”
In the long run, having more eyes on him in the Octagon will be a benefit, even if it’s only twice per year. Ortega is a man of many interests and endeavors, and not all of them involve fighting.
“This game is who can move the needle. The more eyes that are on you, the better,” he said. “The more you’re doing better while these eyes are on you the more the fans they’re going to go for you, starting to cheer for you. Ultimately that’s what I want to do man, either gain fans and supporters from everywhere. UFC is one platform. After this I’m going to be doing a little bit of acting and doing some stuff like that. Let me just get more eyes on me from different platforms to help me pretty much relay my message that I want.”
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