Watch: Free Fight — Brian Ortega vs. Yair Rodriguez II

It turns out Brian Ortega has plans for the end of June. 

Last week, it was announced by the UFC brass that former world title challenger Ortega — the fighter with arguably the finest submission skills in the organisation’s featherweight division — is to fight Diego Lopes at UFC 303 later this month in a new co-main event hastily arranged after both of the originally scheduled headline bouts fell off the card.

And Ortega is keen to make up for lost time. ‘T-City’ returned to the Octagon in February for the first time in almost two years, where he scored a (surprise, surprise) submission win against Yair Rodriguez in Mexico City. The win came after Ortega sustained a serious shoulder injury against the same opponent in July 2022. Prior to that, Ortega was defeated by then-champ Alexander Volkanovski in September 2021, meaning that his most recent win before that came all the way back in October 2020 against the ‘Korean Zombie’ Chan Sung Jung.

And as Ortega looks to consolidate his position atop the division against the dangerous Lopes in a little less than two weeks, remind yourself of his rematch win against Rodriguez in the video below.

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