Cory Sandhagen knew that a win over Marlon Vera would definitely give him an upper hand when it comes to competing for the bantamweight title. Unfortunately though, even after the impressive victory against Vera, Sandhagen is still waiting for other fighters to have their own fight before he can compete in the championship match. Aljamain Sterling and Henry Cejudo are scheduled to face each other for the title at UFC 288, and Sean O’Malley might be next in line if he does well enough.
Before his fight, Sandhagen thought he should fight O’Malley first before challenging for a UFC title. However, when he won the match, he changed his focus to Dvalishvili instead because he had just won a battle against Petro Yan that lasted five rounds.
“I won’t follow other people when it comes to martial arts,” Sandhagen said on The MMA Hour. What I try to do is become the best martial artist that I can and if that means taking a harder road to becoming a world champion, then I’m okay with dealing with it.”
O’Malley wants to take the hard route instead of looking for an easy way. He says when he gets to the top of whatever this is he’s trying to do, it will make him feel even better than it would if he took the easy way up. Last October, O’Malley won a big match against Yan and that made it seem like he was next in line for a title shot.
Dvalishvili just won a big match against Yan, but he said he doesn’t want to fight his long-time friend and training partner Sterling. This makes it so O’Malley is likely going to get the next title shot, which means Sandhagen thinks Dvalishvili and himself will probably have to fight in the future.
Sandhagen said he did not know why Merab’s fight wasn’t going to happen. He also didn’t know who else Merab could fight. Cejudo and Sterling, however, wanted very much to battle O’Malley instead of him or Merab. They seem especially eager for the match with O’Malley.
There might be a reason why two people don’t want to fight with O’Malley. But, it doesn’t seem like UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) isn’t letting this happen as they may still want O’Malley to try and win the championship title. Merab is likely going to be the better opponent for this fight due to particular timing reasons. Sandhagen mentions that he wants his next fight to take place before September as his wedding has been scheduled during then.
The 30-year-old fighter from Colorado would like to give his fiancée a break from worrying about both their wedding and his fights since he is often away training or competing. He wants her to just concentrate on planning the wedding instead.
Sandhagen said that he needs to do something before the wedding, and he wants to make sure Erica doesn’t stress out about it too much. She said she understands, because she is an expert in this field. He also mentioned how his behavior towards this problem can change when he enters training camp mode.
“I can keep on fighting until September. It’ll be better for me than if I have to be in a training camp for the wedding.”
