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Brett OkamotoSep 9, 2025, 10:18 PM<\/p>\n
Close<\/a>Brett Okamoto has reported on mixed martial arts and boxing at ESPN since 2010. He has covered all of the biggest events in combat sports during that time, including in-depth interviews and features with names such as Dana White, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Conor McGregor, Nate Diaz, Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and Georges St-Pierre. He was also a producer on the 30 for 30 film: “Chuck and Tito,” which looked back at the careers and rivalry of Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. He lives in Las Vegas, and is an avid, below-average golfer in his spare time.<\/p>\n UFC featherweight Brian Ortega<\/a> has confirmed he passed out and woke up in an emergency room during his weight cut at UFC Fight Night last month in Shanghai.<\/p>\n Ortega (16-5) was originally scheduled to face Aljamain Sterling (24-5) in a 145-pound featherweight co-main event, but the contest was changed to a 153-pound catchweight<\/a> after Ortega weighed-in heavy. The former two-time title challenger looked gaunt and unsteady on the scale, and went on to lose all five rounds to Sterling on the judges’ scorecards<\/a>. In a social media post on Tuesday, Ortega revealed the severity of the issues he faced trying to make weight, including passing out for an extended amount of time on Friday morning.<\/p>\n Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n 2 Related<\/p>\n “I hit 20 minutes on the bike and once I got off, I went unconscious,” Ortega said. “I was unconscious for about 30 minutes.<\/p>\n “During that time, they were putting ice on me, they took all my clothes off, they left me in boxers. I woke up in the E.R., I ripped everything off, I couldn’t really speak, translate to them. I was like, if they don’t take everything off, I’m going to take it off myself. We knew we had a time limit to get to the weigh-ins, otherwise I could not fight. If you saw the weigh-ins, you obviously know I looked delirious and just coming off 30 minutes of being unconscious in the tunnel. After that, I weighed-in. We figured if I didn’t feel good or if something was seriously off, we would call the fight.”<\/p>\n Ortega, 34, has eyed a potentially permanent move up in weight for more than a year, but has yet to book a lightweight fight in the UFC. He was forced to pull out of a short-notice bout<\/a> against Diego Lopes<\/a> in 2024, due to medical issues regarding his weight cut.<\/p>\n According to Ortega, the UFC had a replacement opponent on deck for him in Shanghai, but he remained adamant about taking the fight despite the weight cutting complications.<\/p>\n “[Sterling told me], ‘they have a replacement fighter, don’t worry about it,’ but I told him, ‘nah, I don’t want to waste your time,'” Ortega said. “We ate food. We rehydrated the entire day. I didn’t feel good, I wanted to call it off. Just walking outside, I almost passed out and fainted. Everything in my body is telling me not to fight. First and foremost, I decided to fight for my family. That’s my job, to show up and do what I do for them. Secondly, I fought for you guys [the fans].”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brett OkamotoSep 9, 2025, 10:18 PM CloseBrett Okamoto has reported on mixed martial arts and boxing at ESPN…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":["post-132301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}