“Fortunately, and unfortunately, I do what I say I’m going to do,” Ortega said. “I go in there, and I fight my heart out, and I have a mentality of either I die on my shield or I take someone’s head with me. When you have that mentality, you go to war. All my fights are wars. People can’t say my fights are boring, and that’s because I leave it all in there, and I’m not just talking about it. I don’t just say I’m going to do something and come out with the results that I didn’t say I was going to do.
“It’s a warrior’s life, and with the warrior’s life, you walk in there and things break. Simple as that. When you refuse to take no for an answer and you give it all you have, you go to war, and after these wars, unfortunately, it’s been surgeries and surgeries, and that’s my life.”
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That life brought him to Mexico City with a familiar opponent across from him in Rodriguez. Since the two shared the Octagon for a little more than four minutes on Long Island, “El Pantera” had his own shot at Volkanovski but fell short at UFC 290. Now, the two fan-friendly featherweights finally get to sort out all the questions that have buzzed around their prospective matchup for years.
“I want to see what happens when we both face adversity,” Ortega said. “Then, when we both go through these trials, when his game plan doesn’t work against my mine, and mine doesn’t work against his, when we hit this master chess game that we call it — there’s the human chess — what happens when we’re in there? That’s something that I’m curious about, which is why I joined the sport.”
