Brian Ortega details hellish weight cut ordeal from UFC Shanghai

It has been more than two weeks since Brian Ortega’s loss to Aljamain Sterling at the recent UFC Fight Night event in Shanghai, China in a bout that was changed from a featherweight contest to a catchweight the day before the event. 

Ortega posted a video on social media late Monday explaining that he went “unconscious for about 30 minutes” while cutting weight and was briefly transported to a nearby hospital.

The 34-year-old said he was 1.7 pounds away from making the non-title featherweight limit of 146 pounds when he put his plastic sweat suit back on and got on an exercise bike to try to shed the remaining weight the morning of the weigh-in.

“I did 20 minutes on the bike. Once I went off, I went unconscious,” Ortega said. “I was unconscious for about 30 minutes. During that time, they were putting ice on me. They took all my clothes off and left me in boxers. Woke up in the ER.”

The California native was visibly woozy during his weigh-in face-off with Sterling.

“We were confused on how my body wasn’t really pouring out the water, why it was just holding it in,” he added.

Ortega submitted Yair Rodriguez at the beginning of last year but has lost four of his past five fights and is just 2-5 overall since 2018. Ortega has often struggled to hit the featherweight limit during his UFC career but had never previously missed weight. 

The two-time title challenger in the 145-pound division said in 2024 that he had planned on moving up to the 155-pound lightweight division but accepted a featherweight bout against Diego Lopes 12 months ago then the Sterling matchup earlier this year.

Despite Ortega’s health issues in the hours leading up to the event, the UFC allowed the five-round bout to proceed and Ortega ended up losing a one-sided unanimous decision.

Ortega added: “Aljamain came to me, and he talked to me, and he said, ‘Hey man, I heard what happened.’ I said, ‘I was under for 30 minutes, I ain’t going to lie to you. We have the same manager, I know he told you. I’m here, I’m trying and I’m going to show up.’ He said, ‘They already have a replacement fighter, don’t worry about it.’ But I told him, ‘No, I don’t want to waste your time.’ And I showed up.”

Ortega lost all five rounds on all judges’ scorecards.

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