The anticipated featherweight clash between Brian Ortega and Aljamain Sterling will undergo a significant change for the UFC Fight Night event in Shanghai.
\nOriginally scheduled for the featherweight category, the fight will now be contested in the lightweight division, with a limit of 155 pounds.
\nBoth fighters, Ortega and Sterling, weighed in at 153 pounds at Friday’s official weigh-in.
\nThe UFC has not revealed the reasons behind this change, although it is known that Ortega has had difficulties reaching the 145-pound weight and has considered permanently moving up a weight class.
\nThis non-title fight is scheduled for five rounds and will be the co-main event of UFC Fight Night at the Mercedes-Benz Arena.
\nSterling, former 135-pound champion, moved up to featherweight after losing the title to Sean O’Malley in August 2019. At 36 years old, Sterling is seeking a second belt in the UFC and currently has a 1-1 record in his new weight class. His most recent loss was against Movsar Evloev in December.
\nOrtega, for his part, presents a 1-3 record in his last four appearances, with two of those losses against undisputed or interim champions, such as Alexander Volkanovski and Yair Rodriguez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ortega vs. Sterling: Weight Change for the Shanghai Fight The anticipated featherweight clash between Brian Ortega and Aljamain Sterling will undergo a significant change for the UFC Fight Night event in Shanghai. Originally scheduled for the featherweight category, the fight will now be contested in the lightweight division, with a limit of 155 pounds. Both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[4810,4811,2096,228],"class_list":{"0":"post-27054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-aljamain-sterling","9":"tag-brian-ortega","10":"tag-lightweight","11":"tag-ufc"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}