John McCarthy doesn’t see the desire to compete in Brian Ortega anymore after losing at UFC Fight Night 257.
Ortega (16-5 MMA, 8-5 UFC) lost all five rounds to Aljamain Sterling (20-5 MMA, 17-5 UFC) in a unanimous decision loss in Saturday’s co-main event at Shanghai Indoor Stadium in Shanghai.
Prior to the fight, Ortega said in an interview with MMA Junkie that he hopes to bang it out with Sterling, but wound up looking gun shy, and was outstruck throughout the fight.
“Brian, what are you thinking?” McCarthy said on his “Weighing In” podcast. “Are you truly, really into this? I can tell you, when Brian was young, and I knew him before he was ever in the UFC, and did his fights and would talk to him, he would always talk about, ‘I love fighting … I love fighting.’ That’s great, you need to. This has got to be what you want to do. And then, even in his interviews: ‘I love fighting.’ OK, then why are you not putting the things into it that are going to make you the success that you were earlier in your career? Because there seems to be something askew.
“There seems to be something that is changing, and it’s not just the competition, because he’s faced great competition for a long time now. When you’re facing the Frankie Edgars, the Max Holloways, you’re going to get wins and losses. They don’t come easy. I’m not taking anything away from what Aljamain did, but there were moments in this fight where you’re looking at Brian and you’re saying, ‘There’s your opportunity – go. There’s your opening – go,’ and he’s not. When you are not capable of seeing those moments and pulling the trigger, it becomes a very difficult thing to win the fight. Right now, I just don’t see that same offensive aggression from him.”
Ortega had issues making the featherweight mark, which resulted in the fight being contested at 155 pounds instead. The former title challenger has now lost four of his past five fights.
