The UFC has a target date for their highly anticipated featherweight title fight. We have been wondering when we will see the champion Alexander Volkanovski (22-1) defend his title against top contender Brian Ortega (15-1, 1 NC).
Originally, the two men were supposed to fight back in March at UFC 260. However, Volkanovski tested positive for COVID and had to pull out of the fight. Following the fight getting cancelled, the UFC changed up the game plan.
With Volkanovski needing some time to recover from COVID, the promotion decided to make the two men the coaches of The Ultimate Fighter. The UFC‘s ultimate reality show will be making it’s return in early June after a few years off.
The plan was to have the two coaches fight at the end of the show. However, there still wasn’t a definitive timeline. Well, the UFC featherweight champion appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience this week and he shed some light on when the fight will go down.
UFC targeting September
According to the UFC featherweight champion, he will be defending his title against Brian Ortega in September. Of course, this is not official and the UFC has not announced this fight as of yet.
However, September has been the rumored timeframe for some time now. The Ultimate Fighter debuts next Thursday on ESPN+ and it plans to perfectly build up the UFC title fight between Volkanovski and Ortega.
Volkanovski made it clear on JRE that he wasn’t a fan of Ortega. The champion labeled Ortega as a ‘fake’ individual and teased that you will see some of that by watching the show.
Dana White recently said that there were a couple of times where the coaches got into it on the Ultimate Fighter. However, he didn’t go into detail on how serious everything was, but it’s clear that there’s no love loss between these two men.
The Ultimate Fighter’s return is big for the UFC and it’s big for this buildup. I’m extremely excited and intrigued by this featherweight title fight.