Cory Sandhagen has been showered with both criticism and praise from Sean O’Malley.
Sandhagen Has Agreed To Fight Undefeated Umar Nurmagomedov
The #4 ranked bantamweight contender is coming off an impressive win over Chito Vera at UFC San Antonio in March. While Sandhagen originally called out Merab Dvalishvili after the fight, he will be settling for the undefeated, #11 ranked Umar Nurmagomedov instead.
Sandhagen will meet Nurmagomedov in a main event on August 5th.
“Cory’s pretty f*cking badass for doing that though,” O’Malley’s head coach Tim Welch said on their podcast. “Most people will kind of sit around, wait for a bigger fight. Is he badass for doing that or is he not smart for doing that?”
Waiting around did pay off for O’Malley, who is now scheduled to fight UFC Bantamweight Champion Aljamain Sterling at UFC 292 in August.
O’Malley’s Thoughts
While he can respect the decision to fight someone way below him in the rankings (especially someone as promising as Nurmagomedov), ‘Suga’ doesn’t think this was the brightest idea for Sandhagen’s career.
It can be argued Sandhagen has earned a bigger fight than Nurmagomedov since snapping Vera’s four-fight win streak.
“It depends, businessman-wise? Not smart,” O’Malley replied to Welch. “If you look at it like that’s gangster, it’s definitely gangster.”
“But what does Chael [Sonnen] say? Fight the worst guy for the most amount of money. He’s doing the opposite. He’s fighting not for a lot of money and fighting the best guy. So in that sense he’s f*cking not smart, but it’s gangster. I think it’s gangster he’s fighting Umar.”
Cory Sandhagen has went through a murderer’s row of contenders in his UFC run such as Song Yadong, Petr Yan, TJ Dillashaw and current champ Aljamain Sterling. That theme for ‘Sandman’ will stay the same when he collides with Umar Nurmagomedov later this summer.
