Cory Sandhagen isn’t paying any attention to the narrative that he’s a heavy underdog with little chance to pull off the upset to beat incumbent bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili when they clash at UFC 320 in October.
Now Dvalishvili has earned a reputation as one of the toughest matchups on the entire UFC roster for several reasons, not the least of which is his seemingly endless conditioning where he can mash down on the gas pedal for 25 consecutive minutes without ever slowing down. Combine that with his wrestling, and an ever-improving ground game, and Dvalishvili is a puzzle no one has been able to solve for the past seven-plus years.
While Sandhagen certainly won’t underestimate Dvalishvili going into the fight, he also knows he can’t pay too much attention to all the noise if he plans on winning and becoming champion.
“I’m not going to buy into any of the narrative that Merab’s this cardio machine,” Sandhagen told MMA Fighting. “That he’s this unbeatable guy. That he’s on a tear and can’t be stopped.
“I’m not buying into any of that. I fully plan on going out and beating Merab and wearing gold on my waist. That’s all that I know in my heart.”
Now make no mistake, Sandhagen doesn’t expect to just walk into the octagon and dispatch Dvalishvili in easy fashion to win the UFC bantamweight title.
In fact, he’s preparing for the absolute worst-case scenario because that’s where it seems many of Dvalishvili’s past opponents have come up short. Sandhagen says Dvalishvili’s ability to push the pace might be one of his best-known weapons, but it’s far from his only way to win a fight.
“Our bodies don’t do that good when we get tired,” Sandhagen explained. “We don’t make as good of decisions and we don’t get to move as quick and have as good reactions when we are a little bit fatigued or a lot of it fatigued. Merab pulls people into that, of course, but even in the earlier ways that he fights, it’s very mentally stimulating. Really similar to the way that I fight, too. It’s always something going on that the other person has to be reacting to. I think that’s what Merab does really well on the technical [side], not just him being a freak cardio guy.
“He’s a very focused and engaged fighter. When you’re fighting someone for 25 minutes and they’re engaging the entire time and they are pulling you into deep waters and getting you tired. That’s a pain in the ass. That’s what I do to a lot of people, too. I’ve been already kind of working that.”
Sandhagen believes a huge key to not only surviving a fight against Dvalishvili but giving himself the best chance to win is not allowing the Georgian to dictate the pace.
Best known for constantly pressing forward, looking for takedowns and just outworking his opponents, Dvalishvili has an uncanny ability to effectively force fighters to play his game and react to whatever he’s doing.
If he wants to become champion, Sandhagen knows he can’t allow that to happen.
“I think a major key component to fighting Merab is going to be to make sure that I’m the one leading the dance,” Sandhagen said. “I’m making sure that I can mentally keep up with the pace that that’s going to be, and then also mentally keep up when I do get tired, because everyone gets tired in fights. Just making sure that my brain is good, and my brain can handle Merab for 25 minutes is kind of the key.
“Because technically and scary wise, he’s a super phenomenal wrestler. You can’t take that away from him. Obviously now he’s a submission threat, too. But outside of that, he’s not the most dangerous guy in the world. So just making sure that I’m ready for the takedowns and the submissions and staying focused and making sure that I’m leading the dance and not Merab.”
There have been plenty of feared champions in the past with names like Anderson Silva and Jon Jones at the top of the list when it comes to fighters who almost intimidated opponents before ever setting foot in the octagon with them.
Dvalishvili might not carry that same kind of aura just yet, but he definitely presents a challenge that has exhausted and consumed so many fighters trying to figure out a way to beat him.
“When you fight a guy like Merab, fighting tired just isn’t very fun,” Sandhagen said. “You can do it but it’s just not ideal, especially for a very athletic guy like [Sean] O’Malley. I think that Umar [Nurmagomedov] did a good job of being ‘I’m about to defend these shots, we can wrestle, we can wrestle, bitch.’ There’s that attitude going in to fight a wrestler and then there’s a [mentality] like ‘oh man, I want to keep out of the wrestling exchanges and stuff like that.’ I kind of made that mistake against Umar, too, where I ran from the wrestling exchanges a little bit too much, and I made it so amongst other things, I couldn’t do what I usually do.
“So I learned from that fight big time that that’s not the way to approach someone that’s a really good grappler and is going to make you work for stuff. You kind of just have to [concede] all right bitch, this is what we’re doing and be OK with that and accept that. That makes it a lot easier.”
With the fight two months away, Sandhagen has that much time to ensure that he leaves no stone unturned when it comes to his preparation to beat Dvalishvili. He’s not offering up a prediction just yet, but Sandhagen is confident that he’ll shock the world and walk out of UFC 320 with a title belt around his waist.
“I think that I’ll probably surprise a lot of people with the way that I’ll fight Merab,” Sandhagen said. “I’m excited for that.”
