Brian Ortega is ready for a war with Aljamain Sterling at UFC Shanghai

UFC featherweight Brian Ortega is prepared for war when he meets Aljamain Sterling at UFC Shanghai this weekend.

For the longest time now, Brian Ortega has been viewed as a legitimate contender in the UFC’s featherweight division. He’s even come pretty close to becoming world champion on a few occasions, most notably when he was able to sink in two incredibly deep submission holds against Alexander Volkanovski. Alas, it wasn’t quite meant to be.

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Since that night, Ortega has lost two of his last three – with his most recent defeat being a fairly one-sided loss at the hands of Diego Lopes. It’s been almost a year since he’s competed, and many fans are interested to see what he looks like when he faces Aljamain Sterling at UFC Shanghai.

Ahead of the fight, Ortega made his intentions clear.

Ortega discusses Sterling showdown

“I re-hired someone that we had – not a bad fallout, but we went our own ways and then we had a good conversation about things in the past. We just talked it over and fixed that and patched that. The boxing coach, it was new.

“We gave him a shot, and I started learning again. I started learning things all over again. My striking has evolved and then talking to the wrestling coach about who should we bring in as partners. We just started bringing in high-level wrestlers, NCAA champs and stuff like that.”

“If it was my choice, we bang it out,” Ortega said. “Simple as that. You see me, I kind of rarely shoot in. I’m not really the guy to shoot in. So, if it was up to me, we would bang it out on our feet and give the fans a hell of a fight. But something’s telling me he’s going to shoot in. … He’s good at keeping his distance and his range with those kicks, but yeah, it’s something that we’ve trained for. We watch the fights, we study film.”

Quotes via MMA Junkie