Brian Ortega hopes to 'bang it out' with Aljamain Sterling at UFC Shanghai
Former two-time UFC featherweight title challenger Ortega (16-4 MMA, 8-4 UFC) takes on Sterling (24-5 MMA, 16-5 UFC) in Saturday's five-round co-main event at Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai, China.
After losing to Diego Lopes in his most recent outing at UFC 306 this past September, Ortega said he needed to make some moves to get better. So what's changed?
"Just hired one new coach," Ortega told MMA Junkie. "In this sport, you can't get too excited and try to get better at everything because it's just impossible, but it was getting my life better. That's always been a thing for me. It's always just better, my life outside of the gym. So we were doing that, we were locking in that aspect, and once we locked in there, it was good. We were able to bring the people that needed to be around us and just start working. ... It's striking.
"I re-hired someone that we had – not a bad fallout, but we went our own ways and then we had a good conversation about things in the past. We just talked it over and fixed that and patched that. The boxing coach, it was new. We gave him a shot, and I started learning again. I started learning things all over again. My striking has evolved and then talking to the wrestling coach about who should we bring in as partners. We just started bringing in high-level wrestlers, NCAA champs and stuff like that."
In a matchup between two elite grapplers, many are salivating at the potential scrambles. However, if it were up to Ortega, the fight wouldn't hit the ground.
"If it was my choice, we bang it out," Ortega said. "Simple as that. You see me, I kind of rarely shoot in. I'm not really the guy to shoot in. So, if it was up to me, we would bang it out on our feet and give the fans a hell of a fight. But something's telling me he's going to shoot in. ... He's good at keeping his distance and his range with those kicks, but yeah, it's something that we've trained for. We watch the fights, we study film.
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