Athletes
Cory Sandhagen Wants To Get Back In The Conversation
After Nine Months Away From The Octagon, Two-Time Bantamweight Title Challenger Cory Sandhagen Is Ready To Make Another Run To A Title Shot.
Cory Sandhagen has scaled the bantamweight mountain twice only to be denied championship gold on both occasions once he reached the summit. Now, after returning to his MMA basecamp, he’s ready to make the climb again in a bid to prove that the third time is the charm.
Sandhagen has been a staple of the UFC’s bantamweight championship picture for years, but in a weight class that is chock-full of elite-level contenders, he has only had two chances to fight for the undisputed 135-pound title. His first, against Petr Yan at UFC 267 in 202, ended in a unanimous decision defeat. Five years later at UFC 320, he got his second shot and was edged out on the scorecards again, this time by Merab Dvalishvili, after a competitive five rounds at T-Mobile Arena.
Fights at the top level can be decided by the slimmest of margins, and Sandhagen said that was the case against Dvalishvili, as he admitted that key mistakes ultimately cost him his chance at victory.
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“Yeah, I was just this close, you know? I just made a mistake in the second round,” he admitted.“Part of this thing (is) we all try to really like puff our chest and act like we know exactly what's gonna happen on Saturday, and as a fighter, you have to have like pieces of that to you. But you know, s*** goes wrong in these fights, and I just had a couple of things go wrong in that fight. I think that that was probably the biggest thing for me.
“There's some technical things I definitely could have gotten right a lot better, and I think that I'm going to fight Merab again one day, so I probably won't go too in-depth into all of those things, but I see the sport as like a bunch of X's and O's, with a bunch of randomness thrown into it. If you do the right things at the right time, you win. Sometimes mistakes happen, and hopefully they're mistakes that you can bounce back from, and sometimes they're really difficult to bounce back from, and that's why you need a lot of things to go right in the sport.”
Fighting your way to the top of the bantamweight division is an almighty challenge, and Sandhagen pointed to the defeats suffered by virtually all of the division’s top names to illustrate the dangers of the UFC’s bantamweight shark tank. Ultimately, he said, you need to be in the right place at the right time, and in the right form, to get the chance to fight for the belt.
WATCH: Cory Sandhagen Fight Week Interview | UFC 329
“You look at the division (and) everyone's beaten everyone a little bit,” he explained. “Yan's lost, Merab’s lost, O'Malley's lost, Umar's lost, I've lost, Song’s lost – all kind of to each other, you know – so it's kind of just one of those divisions, and just makes it tough, but that's kind of the name of the sport, a little bit.
“I think that, as time goes through in MMA, we've seen a lot more of that, whereas before everyone wanted to just put the undefeated guy on a pedestal. But we've learned that usually doesn't last that long. So a lot of it is just busting your ass, believing in yourself, and then just hoping that you get a little bit of luck, and that they get some bad luck.”
Full Fight | Cory Sandhagen vs Deiveson Figueiredo
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Full Fight | Cory Sandhagen vs Deiveson Figueiredo
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Sandhagen enters UFC 329 fight week ranked fourth in the UFC Meta Rankings. On Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena, he has the task of defending that spot against a man he’s faced before.
Mario Bautista stepped in on one week’s notice to make his UFC debut against Sandhagen at UFC Fight Night: Cejudo vs Dillashaw in Brooklyn back in January 2019. Sandhagen needed less than a round to secure the armbar submission victory on that occasion, but both men have elevated their respective careers to reach the bantamweight elite. Sandhagen knew the time was right for a rematch, and he knows he’s facing a significantly evolved competitor this time around.
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“Everyone else was either booked, or I just didn't see that the UFC would do that fight. So, yeah, I anticipated it,” he said. “Mario, I think, is a really good opponent. I think that he's definitely a top-five fighter. I think that he's got skills, you know? I can tell he's a hard worker. I can tell he's like a very perseverant guy. (He is) pretty stern, and kind of his personality, and even in the way that he fights a little bit, he's pretty rigid. So I'm gonna go out and do my thing and just, you know, beat up Mario.”
When asked whether there was anything he could take from their first meeting and apply in their rematch, Sandhagen smiled and shook his head.
“It was so long ago, man. My memory is like two weeks long, dude!” he grinned. “Maybe that helps me get over losses a little bit too, but my memory is so bad that all I remember from that fight is that there was no footage on Mario, so I was like, ‘All right, I guess we're just gonna like fight however.’
“It was in New York, so I got to fight in front of my family that lives out there, and that was kind of cool for me. And it was the first fight on ESPN when me and him fought. Past that, I don't really remember too much of the fight, other than, of course, how it went. But now I think that me and him are both completely different people. We're both much older now, and more experienced, and (we’ve) developed a lot more skills, both of us. So, yeah, it's gonna be a good fight.”
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Victory over Bautista will see Sandhagen return to the win column following his loss to Dvalishvili and would set him back on an upward trajectory as he looks to earn himself a third crack at championship gold. Just as importantly, it gets Sandhagen back into active rotation again, competition-wise after a longer-than-ideal nine-month layoff.
“It’ll just get me back in the conversation,” he said. “I've been out for a long time, so that kind of sucks. You stay out of the sport for a little bit of time, and people forget about your skills, and they forget how good you are, and they kind of stop talking about you. So yeah, I'm excited to get back in that mix, you know what I mean? … I think Yan and Merab are probably scheduled for some time this year, and I just want to go out there, (and) beat Mario, who I think is probably one of the better opponents that these top guys, myself included, are having to face.
“So, I think that a win over one of the better up-and-coming guys is gonna give me a lot of leverage, and me working myself back to that title shot. I don't think it'll be like right after this one, unless they want to, unless you want to, but I'm not going to bank on that. So I think I'll have to win this one impressively, get back in conversation, and then just see what happens from there.”
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And when asked what sort of performance he wants to put on this weekend, Sandhagen explained that he just wants his performance, not his pre-fight predictions, do the talking.
“I'm just gonna go out there and do my f****** best, man,” he said. “We all like to talk and say things, because people sell fights, and all that's not really my style. I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna probably have to deal with a lot of Mario's b*******, and I'm gonna get over it, and I'm gonna start doing my stuff. And I really believe that I'm better than Mario everywhere. I just think that that's true. And so, regardless of wherever the fight goes, whether I take it there or he takes it there, I feel confident in my abilities to beat him there.”
UFC 329: McGregor vs Holloway 2 took place live from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 11, 2026. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!
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