Things didn’t go according to plan for Brian Ortega at UFC 306 last September when he fought Diego Lopes for a shot at the featherweight title.
Ortega took a big shot early in the first round and was nearly put out. From there he spent the rest of the fight just treading water as Lopes worked him over for majority of 15 minutes. In a new interview on Paddy Pimblett’s Chatting Pony podcast, “T-City” discussed the loss and what went wrong.
“I believe the meme, bro. I think that second [punch] woke me up,” Ortega admitted. “I gotta humble myself and be honest.”
“I didn’t like the idea of our game plan,” he added. “It was like, put pressure on him. I was like, ‘Yo, the guy has a lot of first round KOs. I don’t know if putting pressure on him off the bat is a good idea.’ They’re like, ‘Ey bro, trust me.’ And I was like, ‘Alright. F— it.’ I was like, bro, he seems to kinda gas out after the first. He slows down a little bit.”
“I went in there. It was like [bam bam bam]. I was like, ‘Son of a b—h.’”
From there Ortega was just a step behind Lopes.
“It’s like a race, if you trip when they say go, now you have to catch up for the rest of the fight,” he said. “And that’s what it felt like the whole night. And I usually do five rounds, in the fourth and fifth I come alive a little better. Three rounds went like this and I was like ‘Yo, what? It’s over.’”
As for what’s next, Ortega is hoping for a September fight but doesn’t have anything locked in yet. All that talk about potentially moving up to lightweight? He says that was out of desperation as he waited for the UFC to get him a fight.
“They said, ‘Yeah, dude. There’s no fight for you. You either wait or … you kind of have to wait. We don’t want you fighting anyone else at featherweight because we want you to fight for the title. But you’re third in line.’”
Ortega is now 1-1 since returning from a two year hiatus. He’s keeping his weight in check so he can accept a fight as it comes. Hopefully the UFC is a bit more creative with their matchmaking to get him back into action soon.
