Brian Ortega Reveals Motivation for Accepting Diego Lopes Fight on Short Notice

Brian Ortega had a larger goal in mind while accepting his upcoming fight against Diego Lopes.

A high caliber featherweight matchup between Ortega and Lopes is set to co-headline UFC 303 on Saturday at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. While one might expect Ortega to have been lured by a huge paycheck, “T-City” claims his fight purse for UFC 303 is not much higher than his average UFC salary. Ortega revealed that he had another reason for accepting the Lopes fight.

Ortega, who has spoken up about mental health on several past occasions, attended a camp at his church directed towards improving men’s mental health. After Ortega enjoyed the camp with his kids, the pastor told him they needed to raise $100,000 to keep things running. And the Lopes fight offer came at the right time for the former UFC featherweight title contender.

“Obviously, they changed up the pay a little bit but it’s not more than you think,” Ortega told Shakiel Mahjouri. “I’ve already been making money like that… I did this man camp where I saw a lot of men change their lives… All these men talking [about] going through pain and what’s going on, what’s bothering them, we had a whole man camp about that. Which was 160-something people. We all did it and I brought my kids with me. We had fun. It was just life changing, man. And then the pastor told me, pastor Jeremy, he was like, ‘Hey dude, just so you know, my goal is to make this better but we need to raise $100,000.

“And for some reason that stuck in my head. And I was like, ‘Dude I gotta make it my mission to save all these men or to help these men get saved’… So, God called me to do this fight and after the fight help these men out.”

Ortega is coming off a submission win in a rematch against Yair Rodriguez at UFC Mexcio City this past February. The win saw him rebound from a two-fight slump, which included a hard-fought title loss against Alexander Volkanovski followed by an unfortunate injury-shortened defeat against Rodriguez.