As we continue with the preview series for UFC 267, we get to the co-main event for the interim bantamweight championship. I think this is the fight that I am personally looking forward to the most. Cory Sandhagen is one of my favorite fighters in the sport, so I am admittedly a little biased here. I'm also not the biggest fan of the way Petr Yan has gone about things following his DQ loss to Aljamain Sterling, but I'll keep the personal biases to as much of a minimum as possible when outlining things. I've talked about Petr Yan on this page before, so I'll start with him.
This will be Yan's first appearance since he lost his bantamweight title in controversial fashion to Aljaimain Sterling this past March. Prior to that, he had been on a nice run for his entire career, with only 1 previous loss to Magomed Magomedov before either of them came to the United States and it came via a split decision. For whatever it's worth, Yan did win the rematch between them the following year. While Yan has had a lot of success in the UFC, one criticism is that he hasn't faced the toughest competition, which is a weird thing to say about someone who has already captured a UFC championship in their career. His best win was on Fight Island against Jose Aldo when he won the title that was vacated by the retired Henry Cejudo. I believe that Aldo was ranked 6th at the time, which isn't usually the number you see next to someone fighting for a title, but I think in what we've seen from Aldo since that loss, maybe it wasn't as easy of a fight as it may have seemed at the time. His other toughest opponent was Aljo, who he lost to, even though it seemed all but decided that he was going to win and potentially finish that fight before the illegal knee. Besides that, his best wins are an older Urijah Faber, Jimmie Rivera, and John Dodson. With all due respect to those guys, I don't think at the points he fought them, they were really the types of wins that would traditionally propel someone into a title shot. However, that's how the chips fell and he took advantage of it with a dominant win over Aldo. Yan is without a doubt one of the best bantamweights in the world and definitely should have received the rematch with Aljo rematch after the way the previous fight ended and now that he was forced to withdraw, this is the fight we get.
With Cory Sandhagen, his path was a little more complicated. First, as many of you already know, he was a somewhat short notice replacement for Aljamain Sterling after he wasn't cleared following his neck surgery. Sandhagen needed a few things to break his way in order to be in this fight, but I do think he is deserving and can most definitely win. As I've stated multiple times now, Sterling had to pull out and that opened the door for a potential replacement. Former champion TJ Dillashaw defeated Sandhagen in what was both of their last appearances, but he suffered a knee injury that required surgery and is unable to compete. I'm sure there is a published article somewhere, but I know Ariel Helwani has mentioned on the MMA hour more than once that the UFC asked Rob Font and he was unavailable, but as far as I know, a reason was never stated. This allowed Sandhagen to step into this huge opportunity even though he is coming off of a loss. I thought Sandhagen should have gotten the win over Dillashaw for whatever it's worth, but that's neither here nor there. Despite all of these hurdles, I think Sandhagen's resume is pretty on par with the wins that Yan has. They both now have losses to Sterling and Sandhagen has the aforementioned split decision loss to Dillashaw to go along with his only other loss, which came to Jamall Emmers in the LFA. His best wins have come against Frankie Edgar, Marlon Moraes, and Raphael Assuncao, which I don't see as being all that different than the wins Yan has had. Now that their path and resume's have been laid out, we can try to get into the actual matchup a little bit.
I don't know when I'll feel comfortable to just write without saying this, but it's definitely not yet. I am not a fighter, I have never trained, and I am not a fight analyst. I have never trained any martial art of any kind for even a single second in my entire life. Everything I know about actual fighting technique is what I have learned from the breakdowns during the actual broadcasts and pre/post shows as well as a few fighters who have youtube channels (Stephen Thompson and Israel Adesanya to name a couple). So if I misspeak or come across as if I am informing, that is definitely not the case. I can and will only speak to what I can see with my own eyes or what I have heard other people say. While I haven't trained, I do feel like I have picked up a fair amount from just listening to Paul Felder, Daniel Cormier, Dominick Cruz, Michael Bisping, and everyone else who does the analyst desk such as Rashad Evans, Michael Chiesa, and Anthony Smith. With all that said, I think we should be getting a pretty interesting match up here. Sandhagen does have a few submissions on his record and Yan has a single submission win, but I really don't see either fighter looking to take this fight to the ground. Sandhagen will have both the height and reach advantage, which he has in almost all of his fights, so this should be nothing new to him. Sandhagen employs a much more movement based style and uses some flashier techniques, where Yan uses a much simpler style. When I say simpler, I don't mean anything bad or mean to imply that Yan isn't as advanced, just that he doesn't use a lot of crazy looking or wild types of attacks. He is much more stationary and uses a more plodding method of pressure with straight shots and combinations and does so very effectively. Sandhagen is the guy who will use more spinning kicks and flying knees. Spinning kicks are one thing that got Sandhagen in trouble against Dillashaw as the missed spinning attacks allowed Dillashaw to clinch him and control him along the cage, which is ultimately what 2 of the 3 judges saw as the deciding factor in the fight.
I believe in all of the ways this fight could possibly go, we have seen Sandhagen in more of those spots. We've seen Sandhagen be submitted by Aljo, but he's one of the best grapplers in the entire division, so I don't think that should be a concern. We've also seen him withstand some pretty strong submission attempts and also land a few of his own. Needless to say, if this fight has a submission finish, it's almost guaranteed to go in Sandhagen's favor, but I don't see that as likely. We have also seen Sandhagen go a full 5 rounds in a fight that was close the entire way. We saw his cardio hold up and him be able to continue fighting even after rounds went Dillashaw's way. We know he has high level striking after he was able to quickly finish both Edgar and Moraes. However, we do know that Yan's striking is also very good and I'm not going to say that I think either is noticeably better than the other. I think the main thing that we haven't really had to see much of is how Yan responds to some resistance. I mentioned this same concept with Khamzat Chimaev. I'm not saying he can't do it, just that we've never seen him have to do it. How will Yan look if he falls behind in a fight or if Sandhagen starts to get some momentum and starts to really pour it on? it's hard to say. My guess is that a fighter as good as Petr Yan can figure it out, but it would still be the first time he has done it on a stage as big as a UFC interim title fight. We will see how Yan's cardio holds up when Sandhagen is the one leading the dance. Yan looked good late against Aldo, but he was the fresher fighter there. We know Aldo's history with his cardio at this point. How will Yan look when Sandhagen still has energy left in the 4th and 5th if it gets there? Time will tell. At least at this point in time, I feel like I have seen Sandhagen in more situations and know how he reacts to different things. Yan on the other hand, I just have a lot more questions about how he looks when the fight isn't going his way, which they mostly have for most rounds in his career. Even though he lost to Dillashaw, what I saw from Sandhagen in that fight makes me feel confident that he can carry his skills for a full, back and forth, hard fought 25 minutes. I haven't been able to see those same things from Yan, albeit mostly because he dispatches of his opponents before that point. This should be a great fight and I really can't wait to see it.
I'm not picking until my final post on Saturday morning, but I think you guys know where I'm leaning here. What do you guys think? Am I off the mark here? Who do you think becomes the new interim UFC bantamweight champion this Saturday? Let me know and thanks for reading.
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