Photo by Woohae Cho/Zuffa LLC
Chan Sung Jung has just shared an update on when he’ll be fighting again and against who. He also clears up several points on what happened between Brian Ortega and K-Pop star Jay Park.
“The Korean Zombie” Chan Sung Jung vs. Brian Ortega was an amazing fight that never got the attention it deserved the first time it was booked up. But following an injury to Jung that cancelled the fight and then Brian Ortega’s rash decision to attack Jung’s friend and translator, Korean rapper Jay Park, there’s a pretty huge demand for the UFC to book the fight up again and let the two fight it out.
Unfortunately, that might not be for a while. Chan Sung Jung has released a new video on his YouTube channel explaining his current fight status and the chances of an Ortega bout.
”I was given the okay by my surgeon to practice sparring in the beginning of May, so I’ll start with that,” he said. “And if I feel like my eyes are no longer a problem, I’ll go ahead and start scheduling fights. I’ll have to fight with whoever can fit in my schedule … For MMA fighters, nothing is really set in stone. They might get injured or have conflicting personal schedules. I can’t give you a name of who I am going to fight because nothing is confirmed.”
”Although Ortega is the first person on my list of fighters that I want to fight, if I had the opportunity to fight for the title first, I would prefer to do that instead.”
”The Korean Zombie” also broke down the whole Ortega slapping Jay Park incident from all angles (including the ‘Was this fake?’), declaring “I wish no further rumors or misunderstandings.” The video (turn captions on for an English translation) lays out the background story and then details the night of UFC 248.
”With everything that was going on, I thought that the UFC would seat us farther apart from one another,” Jung said. “But they sat us pretty close and it was impossible for him to have not seen me. My wife made eye contact with Ortega a few times and I was told that he kept looking in my direction as well.”
And then Jung and his wife went to the bathroom and Ortega made his move. When Jung returned he didn’t initially believe his friends who told him what happened … until security showed up.
”I still remember how I felt when I found out,” he said. “I have never felt so much anger in my body. I was livid. I remember I started looking around for Ortega despite the security guards trying to stop me. I was furious that I couldn’t do anything, but apparently Ortega was immediately kicked out of the stadium by the security guards after what he did.”
”After the fight, me, my wife, Jay Park, and a few other members of our party met with UFC officials to discuss our options,” he continued. “A professional fighter hitting a civilian? While he was sitting minding his own business? It wasn’t even a man to man fight. Being the stubborn person I am, I had to call the police. This was assault, not part of a scripted show. The police showed up, and they began writing out a police report of what had happened until UFC officials intervened.”
”The UFC officials asked us what we would like to do. If it was up to me, I would have wanted to press charges, but I was not the victim of this incident. Jay Park was the victim. He was in charge of choosing the proper consequence. But if he did press charges against Ortega for assaulting him, he would have to attend hearings and have meetings with prosecutors and he felt that his time would have been wasted in the process of trying to punish Ortega.”
”So I asked Jay Park if there was something I could do,” Jung finished. “And he told me that all he wants is to see me fighting with Ortega because this incident got so much attention. Jay’s past it. He’s no longer angry or hurting. I believe he may be enjoying people’s reactions.”
With very little on the horizon for the UFC despite Dana White’s gung-ho attitude towards getting things rolling as soon as possible, we very well could see Chan Sung Jung vs. Brian Ortega rebooked for the summer. It was a great fight before this drama, and now it has the added extra bonus of being a much bigger deal in Korea after Ortega dragged the larger K-Pop scene into things.