Are we ready to believe in a specialist like Brian Ortega yet?

There weren’t a whole lot of reasons to think Brian Ortega would beat Cub Swanson. Just one good one, which sometimes is all it takes.

Consider the first round of their main event bout at Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 123 event. The first four-and-a-half minutes was about what you’d expect. Swanson, the superior striker and craftier veteran, chipped away at a resilient but somewhat limited Ortega, thumping him to the head and the body and deftly resisting Ortega’s efforts to tussle in close.

Then Swanson (25-8 MMA, 10-4 UFC) made the mistake of letting Ortega (13-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC) get just close to ensnare his head and one of his arms, and suddenly he was struggling to maintain consciousness as he counted down the few remaining seconds in a round he’d otherwise mostly controlled.

Maybe that should have been all the warning he needed. Make one mistake that exposes your neck to Ortega, and all the good work you’ve done up until that point will be nullified.

Only it wasn’t even much of a mistake that did Swanson in. Midway through the second, another round he’d mostly won via a series of striking exchanges, Swanson allowed his head to get just a tad too low.

He didn’t go and do anything dumb. He didn’t stick his neck onto the chopping block the way some fighters do when they allow themselves to get careless in search of a takedown. The worst thing you could say about there was that he allowed his relaxed his state of constant anti-choke vigilance for just a moment. As Ortega looped his arm over Swanson’s head and around his throat, it didn’t even seem like that serious of an attempt.

Then a few seconds later the fight was over.

Let this be a final warning to every featherweight in or around the UFC. This Ortega guy? Chokes are kind of his thing. He can hit triangles and guillotines from all angles, even when you think you’re safe, so best to disregard any assumption of safety and proceed as if you’re always at risk of defeat via a deft attack on your carotid arteries. In other words, heed the wisdom of the Wu-Tang Clan and protect your neck.

But it’s tough being a specialist in MMA these days, even when you’re 13-0 with five straight finishes (not counting that no-contest owing to a positive steroid test) at the tender age of 26. Particularly when you’re thing is the sudden and unexpected application of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, people have a way of dismissing your accomplishments as a one-dimensional trick that will soon reach its limits.

Some of that attitude is the result of experience. The days of submission specialists winning UFC titles seem to be long gone. Former women’s bantamweight champ Ronda Rousey was arguably the last in a long line of fighters with a signature submission move that she pulled off even on opponents who were expecting it, and even she had her shortcomings forcefully exposed eventually.

Ortega might not be quite so limited, but his game is, you might say, very focused on one particular outcome. That makes him a lot of fun to watch. But could it possibly make him great?

It’s hard to be convinced, especially after how we’ve seen this play out in the past. The tendency is to await more evidence, more tests, more ranked opponents.

But then, that’s what Swanson was, a title contender who was more dangerous and accomplished than anyone Ortega had faced before. And just look how that turned out.

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 123, check out the UFC Events section of the site.