Cory Sandhagen left his UFC 329 rematch with Mario Bautista with more than another loss on the record. He now believes a first-round kneebar may have damaged his hamstring badly enough to require an MRI.
Bautista beat Sandhagen by unanimous decision at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, with all three judges scoring the bantamweight fight 29-28. The result avenged Bautista’s 2019 UFC debut loss to Sandhagen, but the submission attack late in Round 1 became the detail Sandhagen kept coming back to once he posted from home.
Sandhagen opened his Instagram statement by calling the night a rough one and did not hide how badly the loss stung.
“Frickin bummer man. Losing in fighting is the most embarrassing thing ever. Sucks.”
He then pointed to the kneebar as the moment that changed the way his body responded in the cage.
“Pretty sure the knee bar tore my hamstring in the first (getting MRI this week). It kept locking out weird if I did certain things. So that kind of messed up my game plan.”
Sandhagen also credited Bautista and walked through how he saw the rounds after the injury.
“Congrats to Mario. He was well prepared. 1st was close but he won it with that knee bar. 2nd, I won (surprisingly cause leg was jacked). 3rd, I wanted to have the same round as before but got dropped. Gotta fight near perfect to win at the top. Something I need to get better at.”
“Appreciate the love from you guys. Enjoy your week. Love you. Peace.”
Here is Sandhagen’s full post:
Sandhagen Says The Kneebar Changed The Fight
Sandhagen did not take anything away from Bautista. He credited him as prepared, admitted Bautista won the first round with the kneebar sequence, and said he still believed he took Round 2 despite the damaged leg. The third round got away from him after Bautista dropped him and controlled enough of the final stretch to seal the decision.
The official result also reflected how narrow the fight was on paper. Bautista got 29-28 scores across the board, while the injury detail explains why Sandhagen’s movement never looked fully normal after the first frame.
Sandhagen has now dropped back-to-back fights after his title-shot loss to Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 320 and the Bautista rematch at UFC 329. That is a nasty swing for a fighter who was still hovering near the top of the bantamweight division and had been tied to future money-fight talk with Sean O’Malley.
The bigger issue is the medical timeline. A hamstring tear can mean very different things depending on severity, and Sandhagen has not announced an official diagnosis yet. Until the MRI comes back, the only confirmed part is that he felt the leg problem in the fight and believes the kneebar caused it.
UFC 329 already had enough injury drama after Conor McGregor’s main-event loss to Max Holloway. Sandhagen’s update added another rough postscript to the same card, only this one may leave a top bantamweight waiting on a scan before he knows when he can fight again.
