The new and improved Brian T-City Ortega put on a clinic on Saturday night and defeated the Korean Zombie with ease. Ortega is now 15-1 in his MMA career and all signs point to T-City getting a shot at the title.
Ring Rust Doesn’t Exist For Ortega
Before his fight on Saturday against the Korean Zombie, Ortega had spent almost 2 year out of the octagon. Injuries and COVID had kept T-City out for so long that fans were unsure what to expect from Ortega. After Saturday’s spectacular performance Ortega is proof that ring rust is not a thing for the Gracie fighter. Ortega clearly did away with the stand and bang mentality and made major improvements to his striking. He also fought on Saturday without his jiu-jitsu coach Rener Gracie who was out due to a positive COVID test.
Chan Sung Jung has devastating knock out power and now holds a 16-6 record with 6 wins coming by KO. T-City chose to wait out the storm against the Korean Zombie in the early rounds and put on the pace later in the fight. Ortega 2.0 was not only patient on Saturday night, but showed that time away can be a major improvement for a fighter. What is interesting is that Ortega didn’t have to use his ground game at all on Saturday, but used enough of it to keep Zombie at a safe distance. Threatening take downs and picking his shots carefully was the key to victory for Ortega. T-City didn’t just throw hands like he did against Holloway, and it paid off in a major way.
Volkanovski Now Has A Real Challenge At 145
Ortega was counted out on Saturday, but now T-City has a shot at the Featherweight belt against Alex Volkanovski. After defeating Max Holloway twice, Volkanovski has been not so patiently waiting for a new competitor. Dana White announced last week that whoever won between Ortega and Zombie would get a shot at the belt against Volkanovski. Now that the title shot picture is more clear it really should be Ortega vs Volkanovski and Zombie vs Holloway. I don’t want to count Zombie out of eventually getting the shot at the Featherweight belt, but a fight between Zombie and Holloway would prove if he is still a top tier fighter. As far as Ortega vs Volkanovski goes that fight has FOTY written all over it. Let’s hope we see that match up happen some time in 2021.
