Las Vegas — Cory Sandhagen finally gets his shot at the UFC’s undisputed bantamweight title this Saturday at UFC 320.
The 33-year year old has fought for interim gold before, but is taking the next step in his career, though he knows it’s far from the last one.
“I think that when I win this belt on Saturday, I’m still going to have a lot of hard-ass work to do after this,” Sandhagen (18-5) told media outlets including Cageside Press during this week’s UFC 320 media day. “So I’m not going to get ahead of myself as much as like, being super proud or being super pumped. Because I know that even after I’m a world champion, I’ve got a long way to go to succeed at what I want to succeed at.”
Sandhagen has made some adjustments from past fights, including not getting overly fixated on his opponent, as he did with Umar Nurmagomedov.
“I’ve kind of got something wrong with my brain, which I’m sure a lot of you guys can tell, but it makes me super hyper-focused on stuff sometimes. I got really hyper-focused on what Umar’s doing instead of what it is that I’m doing. And so I’m not making that mistake again for this one,” promised Sandhagen. “Majority of this camp was making me better at what I do, and then obviously being prepared for the bits that Merab’s going to bring to it. But it’s been a lot of focus on me, and making sure that I’m the best.”
While his attention is fully on Merab Dvalishvili, who has had a stellar run as champ so far, it’s hard to ignore the callouts of Sean O’Malley. One of the UFC’s biggest 135lb stars. O’Malley has been gunning for a fight with Sandhagen at next year’s White House event.
It seems Sandhagen as some interest, at least. “Yeah for sure. I honestly want to be a really active guy,” he told Cageside Press. “Umar and [Petr] Yan are higher on my list than O’Malley is, just because those guys have wins over me. And again looking back on my career, I don’t want to say that those guys have wins over me. So they’re higher on the list, but I know that the fans are super-crazy in wanting to watch me and O’Malley fight. And when that fight does happen, I hope it’s on a big stage like the White House for a belt. So that’s definitely welcome.”
Watch the full UFC 320 media day appearance by Cory Sandhagen above.
