New version of Ortega looks forward to Fight Night in Mexico
Brian Ortega's occupation has taken him all over the world.
The UFC featherweight has competed close to his South Bay home in arenas like The Forum and Honda Center, flown into big cities like Las Vegas, Toronto and New Orleans and impressed overseas in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
But on Saturday, Ortega's bucket list get another check mark when he takes on Yair Rodriguez in a rematch in Saturday's co-main event in Mexico City.
“Dream come true. There has always been a vision, now it's going to come true,” said Ortega, whose parents are from Sonora, of fighting in Mexico's capital. “I've always pictured me fighting in Mexico. I've always pictured when this is going to happen.”
His fighting career has also taken him to the mountaintop twice, only to come up short in both title fights. His first loss, after a doctor mercifully stopped his beating at the hands of Max Holloway, at the end of 2018 sent him spiraling.
Battered and broken, Ortega celebrated his 28th birthday by disappearing with friends for a solid week of partying. He emerged from the chasm swearing off drinking, determined to never fall that far again.
Four years later, he found himself sinking to new depths. “I thought I'd hit rock bottom,” Ortega said, “and I found out you can go further.”
Finally knocked down
Ortega, who turned 33 on Wednesday, is as respected for his elite jiu-jitsu as his chin, tested ruthlessly first by Holloway and again by then-champ Alexander Volkanovski in what many regarded as the Fight of the Year in 2021.
While both opponents were probably icing their hands for days after, neither knocked him down.
Ortega took 10 months to recover from the second loss before taking on Rodriguez on July 16, 2022. Ortega learned his right shoulder wasn't as durable as his jaw, dislocating it after trying to extract his arm from a submission attempt. The fight, after a little more four minutes, was over. Ortega had lost for the third time in four fights. Finally, life took him off his feet. “I was thinking of not fighting anymore. I didn't care about it. Yeah. I didn't care about it,” the Lomita resident said. “Life has hands, man, and it worked my life more than any opponent has ever.”
The next few months were cruel and unrelenting. He underwent shoulder surgery — the same shoulder that suffered a torn labrum in 2016.
“The guy told me the threading on the original surgery, it was like dental floss,” Ortega said. “He goes, `I don't know how you kept your shoulder intact doing what you did from 2016 till now.'”
Ortega was laid up, unable to take his Jeep four-wheeling, or go surfing, or just train. What were once outlets for him were now stolen from him.
He lost friends. He buried friends.
Then came a public breakup with fellow UFC fighter and fiancée Tracy Cortez, the end of a threeyear relationship.
Then two more surgeries — one on each elbow after Ortega said three bones began to grow on the inside of each one, clashing with his nerves any time his arms got hit and causing his limbs to go limp.
“Literally, when I look at the Xrays, they're like three big spikes,” he said.
And the final kick in the gut came when Ortega was training one day and said his right shoulder felt tired. His coaches advised him to get an MRI. Two weeks from being ready to fight, now Ortega was told he needed another surgery after one of the anchors had given way.
“The hardest one was the last one,” Ortega said. “Yeah, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, just everything.”
Ortega says he never felt so alone, so he made it his business to be alone. He holed up in his house and walled himself off from the world, save for DoorDash meals, and wallowed in his pain, numbing it with pain medication and alcohol for three or four weeks.
Isolated while coping with loss, betrayal and heartbreak, Ortega performed an autopsy on his life.
In the end, there was no one else to blame.
“I woke up and I was just like, `I have all my cars, my house, everything I always wanted, but I'm here alone,'” Ortega said. “And I said, `Congratulations, you (bleeping) idiot. You got everything you wanted, right? At what price?' You left your family, I left the mother of my children, I found myself in another relationship that later on was just definitely not it ... and then everything came pouring after that.”
Then a year ago, Ortega found his way out of his misery completely by chance: “I started going to church.”
Like a submission hold
Jeremy Johnson noticed Ortega when he and Cortez had attended his Fearless LA Church a couple times on Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles.
“He was just a guy that came,” the Fearless LA lead pastor said. “You know that a lot of people come one time, you know, just to check off the box called `church.'”
The Christian church, which also has campuses in Santa Ana and San Diego, had a three-day conference coming up in February 2023 —
Saturday
Mexico City Arena ESPN+ (prelims, 4 p.m.; main card, 7 p.m.)
UFC FIGHT NIGHT 237
“from morning to night, we have about 1,000 people come in and 100 pastors,” Johnson said — and Johnson reached out to Ortega via Instagram to invite him.
Ortega initially declined and said he probably wouldn't be coming back. But then Ortega opened up.
“He said, `Man, I'm a mess. I need help,'” Johnson said. “And I said, `Well, how can I help?' And he goes, `Can we meet up?'”
Johnson suggested maybe they could after the conference. Ortega pushed to meet that very day and said he'd be working out at one of his coaches' gyms. So Johnson put on his gym clothes and drove for a workout and a meet-up.
“I think he was shocked when I didn't show up in like a priest uniform or a pastor uniform,” Johnson said.
Ortega spilled his guts to this pastor he had just met, who told him he had a solution and asked Ortega to get on his knees and pray with him.
“There was something that happened that day. And it's like, he not only gave his life to God, but it was like he said, `God, you're gonna be the Lord of my life, you're gonna be in charge,” Johnson said. “It was almost like a submission hold, you know? Like, I'm crying out for mercy, I need you. I can't do this without you.”
Ortega then joined Johnson at the three-day conference. He showed up at 6 p.m. and didn't leave until 1 a.m.
The truth is, he didn't want to leave. “I never broke down so much in my life. It felt good. I felt something, like peace, which is something I haven't had in a long time,” he said.
Johnson described a moment when a pastor was calling people up to the stage who were in need of God's love. Johnson made eye contact with Ortega, who was there with his family and shook his head. He didn't want his two young sons to see him so vulnerable. In his mind, he was a proud warrior, fighting in the streets before and during his UFC career, and they were never to see him as soft or weak.
Once Ortega went up on stage, his life changed. “He said, `I just needed a hug from God, if I'm gonna stand up here,'” Johnson remembered. “And he said, `I felt like God's arms wrapped around me.'”
But then Ortega felt two more hugs. His sons had run to the stage to embrace him, witnessing their father break down and cry for the first time.
“Getting close to God and getting to be in that environment, where things are different and they come to you in a different perspective,” said Ortega, who was also baptized that night. “Realizing I'm not the only one that's in pain, seeing a church full of people who are in pain, seeing the pain in their eyes. I can relate to them when we all walk up to the altar. Again, I guess knowing that you're not alone.”
Johnson has watched Ortega commit himself to being better to his family, his sons as well as the mother of his children. And in the process, his once-shrinking circle has grown.
He has gained a spiritual family. “We're going to be with Brian and we're going to be his family,” Johnson said. “You know, I'm going to be a fan of what God's doing in his life, whether he's the champion or he's done, you know? So I think having that support system is different.”
Working on the inside
As bright as it all sounds, Ortega will be the first to tell you, as a person, he is far from a finished product.
“I take accountability for myself, right? No more pity parties,” Ortega said. “No more than just acknowledging. Taking accountability and making efforts to change everything that I don't like. Yeah, that's the struggle.”
Ortega and Johnson have developed a close bond, their sons becoming good friends. Johnson recalled a moment at a Galaxy game with their kids last year when a fan in front of them asked Ortega, with just one victory in four fights in the past five years: What happened?
Said Johnson: “And Brian just said to him like, `Hey man, I have the outside right? But I didn't have the inside right. And no matter how good and strong I got on the outside, if the inside wasn't right, I wasn't gonna win any more fights. Because I was losing on the inside.
“And he said, `I'm working on the inside now.'”