Cory Sandhagen has been studying UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili closely.
“The Sandman” was the most invested party in attendance at UFC 316 when Dvalishvili rematched his rival Sean O’Malley earlier this month in Newark, New Jersey. After Dvalishvili scored a third-round submission win over O’Malley, Sandhagen was front and center to make his own presence felt.
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Speaking on Wednesday’s edition of “The Ariel Helwani Show,” the top contender shared his sympathy for the former champion O’Malley after losing a second straight fight to Dvalishvili.
“I kind of thought O’Malley would do a little bit better. He didn’t do so hot,” Sandhagen said. “He definitely seemed a little off. So I kind of feel for the dude, too. I think he made some pretty big changes in his life. I hear him talk all the time about signs that the universe sends him from wherever it’s coming from, and he was getting all the signs and stuff [that he was going to win]. I’ve been in a situation where I thought that everything was really lined up for things to go my way and then not had them go that way, so I feel for the dude.
“It definitely wasn’t the best performance in the world, but Merab looks like he just keeps getting better and better, so good for Merab too.”
Sandhagen reestablished himself as the likely next title challenger this past May with a second-round knockout of former flyweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo at UFC Des Moines. The fact that his win came sandwiched between the pair of Dvalishvili vs. O’Malley fights helped keep Sandhagen in the conversation.
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O’Malley’s initial loss to Dvalishvili in September appeared to set the table for Sandhagen to get a fight with the former champ. Instead, the promotion went the instant rematch route for “Sugar,” which led Sandhagen toward Figueiredo.
In that first Dvalishvili vs. O’Malley clash, the latter survived all 25 minutes and lost a unanimous decision, but the differences between O’Malley’s two performances were clear for Sandhagen.
“The first fight, the whole vibe of the fight was that Sean wasn’t in control that much,” Sandhagen said. “Even though maybe round-by-round, if you want to look at it under a microscope, it was kind of close, but the vibe of the fight was that he wasn’t winning. This fight [at UFC 316], to me, he didn’t look hardly in control at all. Everyone, especially in this fight, was kind of saying, ‘Sean will knock him out, Sean has a puncher’s chance, blah, blah, blah.’ But the more I thought about it — man, Merab doesn’t give you a ton of opportunities to step in and get hit.
“Merab moves backward when he gets hit, and it’s really hard to knock out a guy that, when you hit him, he’s going away from the energy of the shot that you’re throwing. So he’s definitely just a tough guy to knock out for that reason because he’s really hard to catch on the hard step, and that’s when O’Malley hits people the best. [O’Malley] was kind of afraid of the wrestling, you could tell. It just wasn’t that great.”
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Nothing has been made official yet regarding Sandhagen’s role as the division’s next title challenger, but that was the direction hinted at as UFC 316 came to a close, with Dvalishvili welcoming the challenge. The pair had a brief interaction backstage, which Sandhagen revealed to be cordial.
Regardless of everyone seemingly being on board with the fight in theory, Sandhagen says he hasn’t been “100%” promised by the UFC that he’s next up.
“It would be a really big, giant letdown, and I would probably start crying if I wasn’t the guy after all of that,” he said with a laugh.
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Sandhagen, 33, is no stranger to difficult stylistic bouts and high-pressure wrestling scenarios. Take his most recent loss, a unanimous decision against Umar Nurmagomedov this past August, for example. Nurmagomedov gave Sandhagen all he could handle and ultimately pushed the American to arguably his best career performance, even in defeat.
Against Dvalishvili, Sandhagen believes he has what it takes to stop a seemingly unstoppable champion.
“The conditioning pays off for him big time,” Sandhagen said of Dvalishvili. “He’s not the most intimidating guy to go into a fight against in terms of getting finished — outside of, of course, him adding in some submission threats, which I’m sure he’s going to continue to do. But Merab deserves a lot of respect to be put on his name, by all means. I also think too, though, that if you fight Merab in the proper way, you can be as much of a motherf***er to Merab as he is to everyone else. You kind of just have to know how to do that.
“The last two wins that he’s had, have been people who move their feet a ton. And I just know, speaking from experience, that will get you really tired, and it kind of seems like a little bit of a compensate way to stay away from clinching and wrestling the guy. I’m not afraid to wrestle. You guys saw in the Umar fight that if I get taken down, I will get up immediately if I want to. That’s just a pain in the ass to fight. Not to mention that Merab makes a lot of wide movements with his hands — he’s pretty darty and looks fidgety and difficult to hit. But he makes a lot of mistakes with his hands.
“I kind of plan on master-classing Merab,” Sandhagen continued. “I just have to out-MMA him everywhere and not be scared to wrestle with him or scared to get tired. That’s like 101 in learning how to fight wrestlers. If you’re scared to get tired, you’re going to lose. Umar did not do that, but Sean, I think, was a little bit afraid to get tired in that one, and I think that kind of works in the inverse a lot of the time because then you just start moving your feet a lot more and just makes you more tired in the long run. So there’s a lot there, but I’m excited to face the challenge.”
