“He was cool, I like him”- Brian Ortega on his respect for Alexander Volkanovski

Brian Ortega had an impressive outing at UFC fight island 6, to say the least. The 29 year old American dismantled the “Korean Zombie” Chan Sung Jung in his first match in nearly two years. A dominating 5-round victory that ensured him a showdown with reigning featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski. There appears to be no beef with Volkanovski, and Ortega even went to say that he “liked” Volkanovski and had deep respect for him.

Brian Ortega reveals how past encounter with Alexander Volkanovski made him respect the UFC champ

Brian Ortega had ill will against Sung Jung ahead of their fight at UFC Fight Island 6. This was due an incident in Las Vegas during UFC 248 where Ortega was involved in a physical altercation with rapper Jay Park, who was a guest alongside “The Korean Zombie”. Ortega says that a lot of people dislike him for this, except one, Alexander Volkanovski. The featherweight champion apparently spoke to him just after tensions boiled over and it gave him a very favorable opinion of his next potential opponent.

“He’s a cool dude. I like him,” Ortega said about Volkanovski on the UFC post-fight show. “After that incident happened over there in Vegas right after the world hated me and some Korean pop singers don’t like me, he came up to me and he’s like ‘what’s up man, what happened with that and everything?’ He talked to me and it was cool.”

He further added, “You get a lot of champs, they don’t even want to look in your direction or talk to you. They see you already as an enemy and I don’t want to see anyone as the enemy. We go there, we go there but he was cool. I like him.”

While the contempt shared with Jung drove the narrative for his main event fight on Saturday night, Ortega doesn’t need that to fuel him to compete. He has nothing but the utmost respect for Volkanovski. But that won’t change his performance should they finally meet in the cage. “Good intentions, bad intentions, good blood, bad blood, we get down,” Ortega said.

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