A rumored featherweight championship clash between Max Holloway and Brian Ortega is official for UFC 231.
Promotion officials confirmed the pairing on Wednesday following a report from TSN. MMAjunkie.com initially brought word of the matchup.
UFC 231 takes place at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Dec. 8 and also features a women’s flyweight championship tilt between Valentina Shevchenko and Joanna Jedrzejczyk. The promotion also announced two other bouts for the event: Jimi Manuwa vs. Thiago Santos at light heavyweight and Elias Theodorou vs. Eryk Anders at middleweight.
Holloway and Ortega were initially slated to meet at UFC 226 on July 7. The bout was scrapped after Holloway began suffering concussion-like symptoms days before the event. Ortega then turned down a short-notice fight in favor of waiting on Holloway to return to full health.
Holloway last appeared at UFC 218, defending his 145-pound title with a third-round TKO of Jose Aldo. Various issues have forced him to withdraw from three subsequent bookings: vs. Frankie Edgar at UFC 222; vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 223 and the aforementioned bout vs. Ortega at UFC 226.
Ortega is unbeaten in 15 professional outings, including seven UFC appearances. Most recently, “T-City” scored a first-round knockout of Edgar at UFC 222.