Love & War With Dominick Cruz<\/a>, the former UFC bantamweight champion asked Ortega about Cortez, and he opened up about it like never before.<\/p>\n\u201cNot to sound bad, right, but like I think she got lucky at the right time in my life,\u201d Ortega told Dominick Cruz. \u201cI finally left all these coaches, all these relationships that I had for forever, like I started [with a] brand new slate, like things, I started listening to myself. And then I meet homegirl, and then I\u2019m like, well, I can start from scratch. I think she understands it\u2019s the same life that I live\u2026 and everyone was feeding all that like, \u2018Dude, power couple,\u2019 and this and that, and you\u2019re like, \u2018all right, cool, let\u2019s do it..\u2019 And then shortly into that I was like, \u2018Damn, I f*cked up.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then, because I already left the kids, left the family, it was like, \u2018Damn, I already know if I dump her right now, everyone\u2019s going to laugh at me.\u2019 So it was the ego again. I was like, No, I don\u2019t let people laugh at me. So I\u2019m going to put up with all this craziness. \u2026 I knew four months in [it wouldn\u2019t work]. Slowly but surely, then I found what the male did, and then what a woman does to you. And you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, shit. It\u2019s a different kind of game here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Ortega and Cortez were together for a little over two years and appeared to be engaged. \u201cT-City\u201d says the relationship continued to get rocky, and even affected preparations for fights \u2014 including his wild championship fight with Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 266 in September 2021.<\/p>\n
Eventually, Ortega said he needed to move on.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, finally, I had enough, and I was like, \u2018Yo, man, you gotta go,\u2019\u201d Ortega said. I gave myself a Christmas present and just said you got to leave on Christmas. \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mom, my family, the second they saw that I was with homegirl, they\u2019re like, \u2018Yo, we don\u2019t no part of you.\u2019 They\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019re disappointed in you.\u2019 And at first, I was like, you\u2019re just mad because I left. They\u2019re like, \u2018No bro, like, you f*cked up.\u2019 My mom was like, \u2018The worst thing that can happen to a mom is to see her son with someone like that, and at that time, I thought she was just being a hater, right? And then as I started living that kind of life, she was like, \u2018Son, you\u2019ll never be at peace.\u2019 She goes, \u2018Who that girl is? Can she change? I hope she does, but who she is now, you\u2019ll never be at peace.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd as life started happening, I was like, yeah, you\u2019re right. I was never at peace. Training camps were horrible, like the Volkanovski fight, horrible. Arguing, or the dumb nonsense at like three, four in the morning. And I was like, bro, this girl\u2019s like\u2026 and finally I\u2019m like, \u2018Yo, get out of here. Go back to Arizona. Leave.\u2019 And she wouldn\u2019t leave, and I\u2019m like, oh damn, this is crazy, and I think this is like the first time I\u2019m kind of like saying anything about that. I\u2019ve kind of always kept my mouth shut, but, yeah, it just wasn\u2019t for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
MMA Fighting reached out to Cortez for comment, but as of now, the UFC women\u2019s flyweight contender hasn\u2019t responded.<\/p>\n
Around this past holiday season, Cortez was linked with former two-division champion Alex Pereira, but the relationship ended abruptly. Ortega says he isn\u2019t surprised.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think now, guys, like even Alex Pereira, like all these people, they\u2019re starting to realize that like, OK, I put her on a pedestal, and the world is like, \u2018Oh, my God,\u2019 and then now that they\u2019re realizing who she is, they\u2019re like \u2018Oh, nevermind.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time, Brian Ortega is speaking about his relationship with Tracy Cortez. On a recent episode…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-623500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}