Many in the MMA world could tell Brian Ortega had a rough weight cut for his last UFC outing but the former multi-time featherweight title challenger has gotten into even more specific detail about the trying ordeal. 'T-City' was intially contracted for a clash with Aljamain Sterling at 145 pounds until a last minute shift to a 153 pound catchweight contest inspired by Ortega's difficulties hitting the featherweight limit for UFC Shanghai.
Ortega looked like a shell of himself on the scales with many worrying about him in the lead up to his unanimous deicison loss to the former UFC bantamweight champion. In a video address posted to his personal Instagram account, Ortega said [via MMA Junkie],
"I cut weight on Thursday. We hit the first one – we got down to '51. Second one, later on I decided to jump the gun on that one at 12, but we cut from midnight all the way to 8 in the morning, cutting weight the entire time. I realized I had 1.7 to go still. I was confused on how my body wasn't really pouring out the water, why it was just holding it in, but no matter what, we have to get this weight off so we did."
Brian Ortega on going unconscious and waking up hospitalized
Brian Ortega continued to delve into the tumult with his recent weight cutting situation in China as Ortega stated,
"So we went downstairs, ate something, decided to cut more weight, put the plastics on, sweet sweat. I hit 20 minutes on the bike. Once I got off, I went unconscious. I was unconscious for about 30 minutes. During that time, they were putting ice on me, they took all my clothes off, they left me in boxers. I woke up in the E.R., I ripped everything off, I couldn't really speak, translate to them."
"I was like, if they don't take everything off, I'm going to take it off myself. We knew we had time limit to get to the weigh-ins, otherwise I could not fight. If you saw the weigh-ins, you obviously know I looked delirious, and just coming off 30 minutes of being unconscious in the tunnel. After that, weighed in. We figured if I didn't feel good or if something was seriously off, we would call the fight."
