Fresh off the biggest win of his mixed martial arts (MMA) career — a stoppage victory over Frankie Edgar at UFC 222 last Saturday night (March 3, 2018) — Brian Ortega will next set his sights on the biggest fight of his combat sports life.
“T-City” will face current Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Featherweight champion Max Holloway after collecting his seventh straight win inside the Octagon, fourteenth overall. And though he is still waiting to get confirmation from UFC president Dana White, Ortega loves the upcoming matchup against “Blessed.”
“I love the style. People have said, and I will say it gain, I feel like this is one of the biggest fights in the UFC featherweight division since Conor and Aldo. It’s going to be a great pay-per-view (PPV), and you guys are going to see two young guys who are hungry,” said Ortega on a recent edition of The MMA Hour.
While Conor McGregor vs Jose Aldo received the biggest push of any fight in the promotion’s history, it didn’t quite live up to the hype come fight night as ”Notorious” ended Aldo’s reign in just 13 seconds.
To hear Ortega tell it, fighting Holloway will be like taking on a mirror image of himself, as aside from having aggressive fighting styles, their backgrounds are very similar, too.
“I feel like we have similar backgrounds, as he’s always stayed with his team from the beginning, so did I. He’s got his group of friends, I got my group of friends. He loves surfing, I love surfing,” he said. “Hawaiian versus Mexican; we both like to scrap. I love this fight and I am happy I am going to be there for a full 25 minutes this time and fight for a world title.”
And both are in the prime of their careers, as Holloway is still just 26, with Ortega two months older at 27.
Holloway, meanwhile, is on quite a roll himself, as he is currently riding a 12-fight win streak and hasn’t tasted defeat since losing to McGregor back in 2013. If all goes as planned, the 145-pound title fight could serve as co-main event to the upcoming Heavyweight showdown between Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier, which is set to headline UFC 226 on July 7, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Early predictions?