LAS VEGAS – Brian Ortega has been touted as the UFC’s next featherweight title challenger for some time now.

But now that it’s official?

“I’m ready,” Ortega told reporters Thursday at the UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas. “How can I say it, man? This is something that, for the longest time, was just a vision. Now it’s actually a plan. We’re actually starting training camp for it, and it’s still surreal. It’s like, ‘Holy (expletive), I got the shot.’”

Indeed, he does, and it’s set for UFC 226 on July 7. Champion Max Holloway and Ortega will serve as the co-headliner for the pay-per-view main card at T-Mobile Arena, with champs Daniel Cormier and Stipe Miocic in the main-event spot.

The announcement wasn’t a surprise, considering Ortega’s run. He most recently became the first man to finish former lightweight champion Frankie Edgar – in a fight that Ortega took on short-notice, no less. That followed a submission win over longtime contender Cub Swanson, which makes for a pretty solid cap to an unbeaten record that includes six finishes in the octagon.

Just because it’s a predictable matchup, however, doesn’t mean the timeline leading up to it was simple – all thanks to the stir-up caused by Tony Ferguson’s last-minute withdrawal from a UFC 223 lightweight title meeting with now-champ Khabib Nurmagomedov.

Holloway (19-3 MMA, 15-3 UFC) came very close to attempting a double-championship reign against Nurmagomedov that night. But weight-related health concerns caused the Nevada State Athletic Commission to rule him out the day before the headliner.

The possible outcomes of that encounter could have been cause for concern for Ortega (14-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC), who was already next in line for the 145-pound shot. But “T-City” wasn’t really sweating it.

“I wasn’t concerned, because I was just like, ‘He’s going to have to fight me no matter what.’” Ortega said. “Now it’s just a matter of how much off time do I have? And if he did become champion, then you’re like, ‘I’ve still got a guaranteed title fight.’ Now it’s just a matter of who is it going to be against? So I wasn’t too concerned about it.

“I was a little upset, because I was like, ‘His foot’s hurt. He’s not going to take it.’ And then he took it, and I was like … But I can’t hate on it. Me and (Holloway) were wanting to do the same thing a lot of fighters were not. So I took my hat off to him on that.”

Ortega had also offered to fill in for Ferguson against Nurmagomedov. Holloway’s champion credentials ultimately took preference, but Ortega says he stayed in New York, prepared – and purposely controlling his food intake – to pounce on the opportunity should it present itself again.

“But Thursday night came, and I was like, ‘I’m not getting it.’ I was like, ‘This guy’s making weight tonight,’” Ortega said. “So then I went to Junior’s, and I had some cheesecake. And I kind of ate my frustrations away, and in the morning, he didn’t make. I was like, ‘Noooo.’”

Oh well. It’s not like Ortega would be able to cut 15 pounds in an hour-and-a-half, anyway – especially not after all that cheesecake. Ultimately, neither him nor Holloway got the call, but the fact that they both were willing to step up against the undefeated Nurmagomedov says something about the title fight between them.

“You have two guys that are down to fight,” Ortega said. “He’s not a point-scorer. I’m not a point-scorer. We want to get in there and, at the end of the day, we want to finish each other. Which means we’ve got to hurt each other. For me, that makes the best kind of fights, when you’ve got two guys who really are going for it. This guy’s the champ, and he still goes for it.

“That says a lot. You see a lot of guys, they earn their way to the championship, and they play it safe to keep it. He’s going all in. I’m all in. I’ve always been all in. If I ever become champ, I’m still going to be all in. I just think that makes great chemistry for crazy fights.”

As for the more tangible skills both fighters bring to the table?

“His strength is his striking and his wrestling defense, and his weakness is the ground,” Ortega said. “He’s got good jiu-jitsu, but I feel I have something different when it comes to the ground. We just have to make a training camp based on all his strengths and all his weaknesses and how we’re going to make it happen during the fight, because we’ve got 25 minutes in there.”

If he succeeds on his mission, snapping Holloway’s 12-fight streak in the process, Ortega will get something palpable to show for it: a shiny belt. But for Ortega, 27, who within a single year snuck up with his swift transition from intriguing prospect to legitimate threat, that’s just another chapter of an already successful journey.

“How many fighters can say that they’ve got the chance there?” Ortega said. “Especially coming up from where I came from. Something bad can happen after this fight and never fight again, and I can say, ‘You know what?  I went all the way undefeated to the belt.’ So I’m already winning. The belt is just something extra.”

If by some chance Ortega isn’t successful, putting an end to his own unbeaten run, well, that’s not the end of the world.

“Sometimes I felt like the pressure would be gone if I just got it out the way – if I lost, and the fans talked whatever they had to talk, made the crazy memes and just, ‘I went through that phase, and I know what that is like,’” Ortega said. “But, at the same time, I lost so many other things in my life where – that’s why I feel like I don’t care about a loss.

“And that’s, I think, why I keep winning. It’s because I don’t care about it. You see me down two rounds. I just keep fighting, because I love it. And I want to finish. I’m in your face. I lost a lot of friends, I lost a lot of things in life that, to me, are far much worse than a dent on the record. Just says dash-1, you know? It just means you lost a fight. But, life in general, I lost so much other things that I don’t really care for it.”

For more on UFC 226, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.