- Cory Sandhagen vows to finish Yadong Song at UFC Vegas 60
- “Sandman” reflected on his losses to Petr Yan and T.J. Dillashaw
At one point, Cory Sandhagen came inch-close to copping the bantamweight title. And while he’s still one of the top contenders in his division, “Sandman” is well aware that he needs to prove he’s worthy of another shot at the title by scoring a finish against No. 10 contender Yadong Song at UFC Vegas 60.
No judges this time
According to Sandhagen, the “gameplan” heading into the fight with Song is to not let it go the distance. Instead, he has to give it all he got to “break the guy.”
“I’m really trying to focus on not letting these things go to the judges anymore,” Sandhagen said on ESPN’s “DC & RC” show. “I really want to take it to Song and I want to get him out of there so that there are really isn’t any question of who won or lost. I want to go in, I either want to knock him out, I want to submit him or I just want to break the guy. That’s kind of where my mind is right now, that’s the gameplan right now.”
A different fighter
Having lost via decision to both former champions Petr Yan and T.J. Dillashaw in his last two fights, Sandhagen spent “the last year” working on his game, especially on balancing his approach.
As per the 30-year-old, he needs to be ready to knock somebody out any given time but he also needs to be “smart” and patient.
“I think I fought really awesome against T.J., I think it’s just me being not as urgent against the cage and it gave him control time or whatever. But I also think that in that fight I was coming off two really big knockouts and that’s I’ve been looking for a little bit too much. I could’ve done a little bit more scoring which wouldn’t have been hard to do I think that was a pretty critical error that I made in that one,” Sandhagen reflected.
“And then against Yan, I just need to be more well-versed in order to beat these guys that are just like super dangerous strikers. So that’s what I’ve been doing,” he added.
“There’s always like this weird balance in MMA and I think that that makes it so interesting that you have to be this killer and you have to be this guy who’s ready to be like pull the trigger at any time but you also have to be smart. You’re not fighting like dummies. You have to be very smart in this sport and balancing those two, it can get difficult. Just having the awareness while I’m actually in the fight is really important too and yeah I’m ready to make my second run at the title. I can’t wait to show everyone how good I’ve gotten in the last year,” he continued.
Sandhagen vs. Song will be headlining UFC Vegas 60 which is set to take place this weekend, Sept. 17, at the UFC Apex, Las Vegas, Nevada.
