On the cusp of a return after nearly two years, Ortega reveals his struggle to get through rehab and step back into the cage.
It’s been a long road back to active competition for Brian Ortega, one that he wasn’t sure he wanted to continue taking for a while.
Ortega blew out his shoulder in a freak accident during his July 2022 fight with Yair Rodriguez. Since then he’s been out of the cage rehabbing, and is finally set to fight Rodriguez again on the February 24th UFC Fight Night in Mexico City. In a new interview with Kevin Iole, “T-City” discussed how tough the time off was.
“Yeah, we had a couple of surgeries, man, if I’m being honest,” Ortega said. “Later on, I think I’ll open up about all of them. But yeah, it was a bit of a journey. Bit of a journey.”
“I have had this year to reflect on it where … I would be lying if the questions didn’t come up, ‘Is it still worth it?’” he continued. “Right, because for the first time in my life, I understand when people say ‘I have kids I can’t do this anymore,’ And I used to think ‘Come on man, of course we can, we are strong mentally.’ And It’s not even that, I think what the smart this is about people is some of them look at it in the long run.”
“If I’m moving already like I’m 60 years old, how am I really going to move when I’m 60? My kids — how is it going to be on them, on my family? I would be lying if that thought didn’t come up after kinda doing a tally of how many surgeries I had in total. But then I remembered that … we don’t have a choice.”
Shoulder surgery is a bad time, and if Ortega had to recover from other injuries at the same time, we can understand why he was feeling so miserable. He points to depression as the reason why those retirement thoughts crept in.
“The thoughts of retirement only arose after I hit a certain — after I listened to my feelings. Not my logic, my feelings,” he said. “I got in … depression, or sadness took over. Because all I want to do is fight. And then you don’t fight and you’re going through these battles that people have no idea that you’re fighting.”
“And you’re trying to be positive and tell everyone ‘Guys I’m coming back.’ Then they just make fun of you or push you down. You start to think like, ‘Man, I am grateful for you guys because I have a job and you guys provide me with one. But I’m also discouraged at how negative you guys can be to these fighters such as myself when we’re trying to come back for you guys.”
The long wait is finally almost over. Fully healed now, Ortega believes he’s still a top five featherweight. He’ll have to prove it against Yair Rodriguez, who is without a doubt one of the very best at 145 pounds these days.