Brian Ortega (photo via UFC / YouTube)

By FCF Staff

As Brian Ortega prepares to fight Chan Sung Jung on October 18th, the featherweight contender says he’s not carrying the pressure he was, ahead of his last bout.

Ortega hasn’t fought since December, 2018, when he lost via doctor stoppage against now former champ, Max Holloway. The fight marked the first time in Ortega’s career that he had been defeated.

Recently the 29-year-old spoke with MMA Junkie, and while talking about the pressure that came with being an undefeated fighter, Ortega said this:

“It was a lot of pressure,” Ortega said. “People expect you to do things. When you’re expected to do things and perform and finish everyone and everything – people don’t understand because I did it so smoothly and it was working with great success, but the pressure was there. I have a great poker face, but don’t get twisted, I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. I had people I carried on my back all the way to the top and it was a lot of weight on me so for that to be finally done with, to finally be able to go back in there and know that it’s OK to lose.

“I feel like a lot of us, at least for me, I forgot that losing is the reason why I became so good at this entire sport because every time I would go in there, I would lose a fight or I would lose during training, and I would learn from it and I would adapt to it, but I got used to basically winning in training that you kind of just went into this world of I can’t lose, I have to do this, I have to be this and the things in my mind and coaching wise were very much of that nature so now to back to the roots of what made me me is a lot of trial, error and getting better.

“So now the pressure is gone, I can go back to training and losing to my training partners and knowing it’s OK and adjusting and getting better.”

Ortega (14-1) was scheduled to fight Jung (16-5) last December, but a knee injury pulled him from the bout. Jung faced Frankie Edgar instead and stopped the legendary fighter in round one.