Song Yadong Knows His Best Has Yet To Come

Entering on a three-fight winning streak and headlining for the first time in his career, Song did well over the opening seven minutes, winning the first round on all three scorecards and the second in the eyes of two officials. But Sandhagen hit him with a lead elbow two minutes into the second frame, cutting him above the left eye, and shifting the direction of the fight.

Between the fourth and fifth rounds, with Sandhagen having taken full command of the contest, the doctor recommended the bout be halted due to the expanding, leaking fissure that replaced much of Song’s left eyebrow, halting the competitive young standout’s run of success.

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“Actually, I don’t learn a lot from that fight because I was cut early and it wasn’t my plan,” said Song, shaking his head, still as disappointed with the result seven months after the fact as he likely was that evening back in September. “My plan was to push him harder after the second round, but I got cut early in the second round, so I couldn’t take him down, couldn’t kick because I couldn’t see him.

“A lot of people think the cut was bothering me, but my right eye was worse — the orbital bone was broken, so I could see three Corys in front of me. I had to cover my right eye and use my left eye; I could barely see.

“Before the fifth round started, I told myself, ‘Protect yourself, protect your eye, and just keep going; this is your last chance to beat this guy,” he added.

When I suggest that his readiness to waltz back into the fray against a former interim title challenger while dealing with a gnarly cut, a broken orbital bone, and the other assortment of aches and pains that he’d accumulated through the first 20 minutes speak to his character, his tenacity, and his heart as a fighter, Song simply shook his head and suggested I had too much time to think about what it all meant.

“I don’t think too much,” he said, smiling. “You have time, thinking too much — I just go! I’m bleeding, injured, guy in front of me — I never had this situation, but I think it makes me stronger.”

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And there, attached to the end of his response about being in the moment and not thinking about what it all means, he allows himself a brief, unscheduled second to acknowledge that while he may not have learned anything from his run in with Sandhagen, the experience will, in fact, make him stronger going forward.

“He’s definitely one of the top fighters in the world,” he said of the Elevation Fight Team member, who followed up his victory over Song with a win over Marlon Vera earlier this year to cement his standing as an elite contender in the bantamweight division. “You see in his last fight he’s super-smart — his win over ‘Chito’ Vera — and I think I performed better than Chito.

“Out of that fight, I think I can do better,” Song added. “If I (fight) with Cory again, I will do better.”

While a potential rematch with Sandhagen is a matchup to ruminate on at the moment, Saturday’s showdown with Simon is another quality test for the athletic and explosive “Kung Fu Kid,” who enters the contest positioned two spots ahead of his opponent from the Pacific Northwest in the divisional rankings.

The 30-year-old Simon enters on a five-fight winning streak, having earned finishes in each of his last two appearances and three of his last four trips into the UFC cage.

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A former highly regarded prospect, it took the wrestler and frequently mulleted fighter a little longer to make it to the biggest stage in the sport, and his climb up the rankings has been a slow and steady progression. After earning wins in each of his first three outings, Simon dropped back-to-back contests, including a first-round stoppage loss to Song’s head coach at Team Alpha Male, Urijah Faber.

“I’ve definitely been watching his fights,” Song said of Simon, who sits at No. 10 in the rankings. “He fought with Urijah and (since) that fight, he’s been improving a lot. His striking is getting better and I think he’s stronger.

“He’s powerful and a very dangerous guy. Fighting him is not easy.”

It’s definitely not easy, but it’s a challenge Song is happy to take on because he feels a victory on Saturday night will answer some lingering questions people may have about his grappling abilities inside the Octagon.

“I haven’t fought a lot of wrestlers, so I need to prove to people how good my wrestling and jiu jitsu are,” he said, smiling. "This guy is good, and now we have more wrestlers, more strong guys in this division, in the Top 15, like Umar (Nurmagomedov), Merab (Dvalishvili), (Aljamain) Sterling.

“That reminds me that I need to train wrestling more, more, more; not just striking.”

To that end, Song made a training trip down to Austin prior to kicking off his camp for this fight to train with some of the elite grapplers that have taken up residence in the Texas capital over the last few years.

Combined with a number of years working in a wrestling-heavy room in Sacramento with the Alpha Male crew, and the powerful striker has good reason to be confident in his grappling skills when he steps in with Simon this weekend.

“He’s a wrestler — he likes to take people down — but his ground control is not that good,” he offered. “If he takes me down, I can get up, for sure.

“So I think (I just have to) give him some heavy punches, defend the takedown, or take him down. It’s just the details; I have tools to use against him.”