Brian Ortega is handling some drama with the UFC and its President Dana White.

Ortega was originally slated to challenge Max Holloway for the featherweight title in the co-main event of this past weekend’s UFC 226 pay-per-view event at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

However, Holloway had to pull out of the fight after he had been experiencing concussion-like symptoms and was taken to a hospital.

There was some talk about having Ortega fight a replacement opponent. UFC President Dana White went as far as stating during the pre-fight press conference last week that the UFC attempted to get Jeremy Stephens to fill-in on short notice and fight Ortega.

However, Ortega turned down the fight and decided to wait for Holloway to get healthy enough in order to make this fight happen.

If you recall, in his last fight, Ortega stepped in for Holloway to fight Frankie Edgar on short-notice a few months ago. If Edgar had declined to take this fight then he would’ve been fighting for the title but instead, he lost to Ortega and his position for a title fight.

Ortega mentioned on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show that White has initially rejected his requests to receive a portion of his purse for showing up to fight at this event.

However, he did mention that he plans to meet with White a second time at a later date in order to see if they can work out an agreement that would have him paid for his efforts in training camp.

“We had our talk. We agreed to disagree pretty much, I told him if I was going to be compensated for anything, you know, if I would get anything. I told him I showed up, I did everything, my weight was good, did the open workouts, the media and he said, ‘No,’” explained Ortega (transcript courtesy of MMAMania).

“So that was that. I was pretty bummed out, heartbroken. After that, we had another meeting yesterday.

We talked and he said he was just pissed off. He then said we’d talk again this week and figure things out. So right now, I don’t know what ‘figure things out’ means,” he added.