Brian Ortega Details Battling Back from Ankle Injury, Rough First Round at UFC Mexico

It was an inauspicious beginning, to say the least, for Brian Ortega at UFC Fight Night 237.

It started with the pre-fight introductions, when Ortega appeared to sprain his ankle while jumping around inside the Octagon. It wasn’t exactly the best way to begin one’s first fight since July 2022.

“Talk about things stacked against me,” Ortega said at Saturday’s post-fight press conference. “Bruce [Buffer] was introducing me and then I jumped up and when I landed, I rolled my ankle. I was like, ‘Oh shoot.’ … When they were introducing [Yair Rodriguez], I was trying to flex my ankle…We’ve got five rounds. It’s not even a regular co-main event. I’d be lying if I didn’t say panic didn’t set in for a bit.”

It got worse before it got better. Rodriguez dropped Ortega with a left hook in the opening stanza and pursued the finish from there with heavy ground-and-pound. Somehow, Ortega managed to maintain his composure.

“And then obviously I started off, and I got clipped. I paid the price for not being in the zone and not being focused on what I was supposed to do,” Ortega said. “I survived it. I ended up somehow taking him down at the end of that first. We walked back and adrenaline kicked in and I was like, ‘All right, here we go.’”

Ortega turned things around and imposed his will over the rest of the fight, ultimately forcing a tap from Rodriguez with an arm-triangle choke 58 seconds into Round 3. Not only did “T-City” rebound from a shoulder injury that resulted in a TKO loss to Rodriguez in their first meeting, but he again showed his ability to absorb punishment and persevere through adversity. While he might like to have a cleaner victory, that isn’t usually an option given his standing in the UFC’s featherweight division.

“Look at the situation, there’s no easy fights, no easy wins here,” Ortega said. “Since 2017 it’s been nothing but main events, co-main events, five-round fights. I’ve not had an easy fight in my entire career. They threw me the best of the best. I fought Max [Holloway] when he was Max, I fought [Alexander Volkanovski] when he was Volk. You name it, man. That’s just who I am. They give me a name, I say yes.”

Although he has been absent for some time, the victory over Rodriguez once again makes Ortega, a two-time title challenger, a relevant contender in the division. While Ortega sounds like he believes Volkanovski deserves a rematch with Ilia Topuria, he’d be willing to step up if the Aussie elects to take some time off instead.

“There’s some questions out there, but Volk was a great champ,” Ortega said. “For people to kick him down right now, I find it kind of disrespectful for everything that he’s done. There’s some things that have to play themselves out, and we’ll see. If he decides that he does not want to fight…I’m more than happy to go to Spain.”

Prior to Saturday’s victory, Ortega discussed the rebirth that occurred in his life during his layoff. When asked if he felt like a different fighter in the Octagon as a result of that process, Ortega responded in the affirmative.

“Absolutely. 100 percent,” he said. “The rebirth is basically a human having to come face to face with themselves in the mirror and really change all the bad things about you that in the long run will really break you. My family knows all the things that I went through, and it was hard.

“My dad used to say that the eagle was his favorite animal and explain this process to me, and I didn’t really care about it. Then when I went through what I went through, that’s when I understood that…I had to go to war with myself and change a lot of things about me that I didn’t want to, but I did.”