Brian Ortega would be lying if he said he didn’t think of how a potential fight with UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski would go.
Ortega is set to return to action when he faces The Korean Zombie in a highly-anticipated affair in the UFC Fight Island 6 headliner on October 17. It will be his first outing since suffering a brutal fourth-round TKO defeat to Max Holloway for the featherweight title back in December 2018.
Although “T-City” has a tough task ahead of him, victory will more than likely see him earn another title shot. As for how a fight with Volkanovski would go, it’s certainly an intriguing prospect for Ortega who has thought about the matchup before.
“I’ve thought about the guy for sure,” Ortega told MMA Fighting. “I just look at him as an interesting challenge. Can I keep it technical with him and can I play his game? Or do I play his game or do I make it a dogfight? … For me, if I would try to be too technical with him and then if that’s not working I’d just basically make it a dogfight. Sometimes it goes well for me, for the majority of my career it’s gone well.
“But what Max [Holloway] did kind of exposed me as not the best technical guy, so I had to go back in there and fix the patience game, you know? I hate it. You have warriors in there and you have fighters, but they’re both different. Neither is better than the other one—I mean, the one that wins, but I was more of the mentality of the warrior that doesn’t quit. Let’s just go in there and test each other’s will, that was always my mentality. Either I’m gonna get finished or you’re gonna get finished. But in this game, you have to have some smarts and you’re gonna run into people that know how to play human chess, not just f**king warriors and it was a lesson for me.”
Ortega now has a chance to show his new patience game when he faces The Korean Zombie — if it doesn’t turn out to be a dog fight, that is.
And while there are other contenders like Zabit Magomedsharipov, Yair Rodriguez and Calvin Kattar all looking to earn the next title shot, Ortega firmly believes the winner of his fight is the one who will get the next crack — especially after UFC president Dana White built the fight up as a number one contender matchup.
“He [White] said everything about our fight being for the No. 1 contender, but then I heard some other news with Zabit and all this stuff and everyone saying they had No. 1 contention,” Ortega added. “But I was like, ‘Where’s your proof versus mine?’ I got video proof.
“So now that he kind of went out there and just restated that, it makes me feel better. More confirmation that whoever wins this fight will get a crack at that belt.”
How do you think Ortega fares against Volkanovski?