Brian Ortega survives rough opening round, submits Yair Rodriguez in UFC Mexico City co-main event

The Ultimate Fighting Championship returned to us tonight, February 24, 2024, for UFC Mexico City going down live from Mexico City, Mexico.

Headlining the event is a 125 lb rematch between no. 1 ranked former two-time flyweight champion Brandon Moreno (21-7-1) and no. 3 ranked former title challenger Brandon Royval (15-7).

Our five round co-main event of the evening came in the featherweight division between no. 3 ranked Yair Rodriguez (19-5, 1 NC) and no. 4 ranked Brian Ortega (16-3, 1 NC).

Rodriguez won their first encounter back in July of 2022 via TKO (injury) at 4:11 of the opening round and went on to defeat Josh 1Emmett for the interim UFC featherweight championship half a year later at UFC 284, before coming up short in his title unification bout with Alexander Volkanovski. Ortega on the other hand hadn’t fought since.

Continue reading to see how this co-main event rematch went down:

Official Result: Brian Ortega def. Yair Rodriguez via submission (arm-triangle choke) at :58 of round three

Ortega controls the center early and gets caught with a stiff jab coming in, before Rodriguez lets go with a combination. Ortega returns fire and lands a couple good punches of his own, before eventually getting dropped with a punch. Rodriguez starts to batter Ortega with a vicious attack before ending up in his guard, trying to land punches from top position.

Ortega has a much better round two, pressuring Rodriguez with barrages of punches en route to taking him down. He proceeds to cut Rodriguez up with nasty elbows and punches from inside his guard for much of round two.

Ortega secures a body lock early on in round three and soon after secures a single leg trip. From here he moves to mount, landing a couple more shots from top position before sinking in an arm-triangle choke for the finish early in round three.

Brian Ortega gets revenge and submits Yair Rodriguez in round three! #UFCMexico

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— COMBAT SPORTS TODAY (@CSTodayNews) February 25, 2024

Tonight, Brian Ortega secures his eighth career octagon victory, this being the fifth via third-round finish.

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Brady Ordway

I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was scrolling through the channels and landed upon Versus, where WEC was televised. Urijah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. That's the first fight I ever saw, and I was immediately hooked. So eventually, I began covering the sport in the fourth quarter of 2018, and have since started writing about animals as well. If you'd like to see those pieces, be sure to check out learnaboutnature.com!

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