On Episode 24 of Love & War with Dominick Cruz, the host pressed Brian Ortega about his high-profile relationship with fellow UFC star Tracy Cortez. Ortega, who said he had stayed silent for roughly three years, described the conversation as the first real time he had openly spoken about the situation.
Cruz set the stage directly, acknowledging the public curiosity surrounding the relationship. “Everybody wants to know what was actually going on with you and Cortez during this time, man. You know, that was a lot. That was hard, wasn’t it?” he said.
“That was rough,” Ortega replied.
He then placed the relationship’s beginning in the context of a major transitional period in his life. Ortega explained that he had recently cut ties with coaches and influences he felt had been steering him in the wrong direction. Around that same time, a long-term relationship he had been in began to fall apart.
“She went this way far and I went this way far, and then we’re so far away from each other that even when I did try to make it work finally, she wasn’t having it,” he said. “We’d go on a date and we just sit there, bro. And it was like really awkward.”
After those attempts failed, Ortega said Cortez felt like an opportunity for a fresh start, someone who understood the demands of an athlete’s lifestyle.
“I can start from scratch. I think she understands the same life that I live,” he said. “Like she understands the life, right? And everyone was feeding all that, like, ‘Dude, power couple,’ and this and that. And you’re like, ‘All right, cool. Let’s do it.'”
That early optimism, however, did not last long. Ortega admitted he quickly realized the relationship was not working.
“And then shortly into that, I was like, damn, I f**ked up,” he said.
Rather than ending things immediately, Ortega explained that pride and public perception kept him in the relationship longer than he believed he should have stayed.
“I already left the kids, left the family,” he said. “I already know if I dump her right now, everyone’s going to laugh at me. So it was the ego again. I was like, no, don’t let people laugh at me. So I’m going to put up with all this craziness. Yeah, bro. I knew four months in.”
He described training camps during that period as particularly difficult, pointing to his preparation for his match against Alexander Volkanovski as one of the lowest points.
“Training camps were horrible,” Ortega said. “Like the Volkanovski match, horrible. Arguing, or just dumb nonsense over like 3 or 4 in the morning. And I was like, ‘Get out of here. Go back to Arizona. Leave.’ And she wouldn’t leave.”
According to Ortega, his mother had recognized the problems long before he did. At the time, he dismissed her concerns, but her words eventually proved prophetic.
“The worst thing that can happen to a mom is to see her son with someone like that,” he said. “And at that time I thought she was just being a hat er.”
As the relationship continued, he began to see her perspective more clearly.
“And then as I started living that kind of life, she was like, ‘Son, you’ll never be at peace,'” Ortega recalled. “She goes, ‘Who that girl is, can she change? I hope she does. But who she is now, you’ll never be at peace.'”
Looking back, Ortega admitted his mother’s warning turned out to be accurate.
“And as life started happening, I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re right. I was never at peace,'” he said.
Ultimately, he said he made the decision to end the relationship at the end of the year, framing it as a personal turning point.
“I gave myself a Christmas present and just said, ‘You got to leave on Christmas,'” Ortega said.
