Cory Sandhagen’s next order of business takes him to the Midwest for a showdown in Des Moines, Iowa.
As a perpetual contender atop the UFC’s bantamweight rankings, Sandhagen is no stranger to big fights and accomplished opponents. His next obstacle is no different, as he’ll battle it out on May 3 in the main event of UFC Des Moines against former two-time UFC flyweight champion Deiveson Figueiredo.
Figueiredo departed the flyweight division in 2023 to great success, racking up three consecutive wins over Rob Font, Cody Garbrandt and Marlon “Chito” Vera before finally falling short in a top contender bout against Petr Yan this past November. Yet as Sandhagen surveys his next assignment, he can’t help but notice certain changes in Figueiredo from the ex-champ’s best days at 125 pounds.
“[Figueiredo has] been fighting differently at ’35 than he has at ’25,” Sandhagen explained on Uncrowned’s “The Ariel Helwani Show.” “He doesn’t really march people down the same way that he used to. I think just because we’re much bigger in this division compared to him. Especially me, my frame is kind of hard to walk down. So yeah, ‘Figgy’ has been fighting a little bit different. He’s been grappling a lot more with the guys in this division. He didn’t have a lot of success against Yan in the grappling department, and that was the one that he lost.
“He’s a little bit older now too. Not to beat around the bush, he’s definitely like an older guy now, and I don’t really think that he fights with the same amount of ferocity that I feel like he used to.”
As one of the largest and lankiest competitors competing at 135 pounds, the 5-foot-11 Sandhagen will have a significant size advantage over his 5-foot-5 opponent at UFC Des Moines. The optics are sure to be a bit comical at a glance, admits Sandhagen, however it’s nothing new — he compares Figueiredo’s stature to another past opponent, John Lineker, who was two inches even shorter than Figueiredo.
“I’d definitely rather be me than ‘Figgy,'” Sandhagen said. “If you’re going to be shorter, better you be a wrestler and shorter, but [Figueiredo is] not really a wrestler. He has good jiu-jitsu and good submissions and stuff, but his takedowns are very one-note. He doesn’t chain stuff together very well. Then, if you’re shorter, taking down long lanky guys can just be obnoxious. A lot of wrestlers have told me that throughout the years. Just being built the way I am, it’s an annoying style to have to deal with.
“I think he’s just going to come out there and try to catch me. I feel like that’s just kind of the way he’s been fighting a lot of his fights — he’s going to try to catch me with a punch or a kick or catch me in a submission, and I think that time has showed that’s not the winning strategy against me. So I don’t really know what he’s going to do after that — probably take me down, but I don’t think he’s going to have any success doing that. Even if he does, I’ll get up, then I think it’s just going to be me kickboxing him the whole time.”
Sandhagen has become accustomed to the UFC main event spotlight, with UFC Des Moines serving as his seventh overall and fifth consecutively.
Figueiredo presents a good test for Sandhagen following a disappointing unanimous decision loss to Umar Nurmagomedov this past August. A title shot was on the line for Sandhagen in that one, which at the time meant a potential encounter with the now-former champion Sean O’Malley.
But with Sandhagen and O’Malley suddenly coming off losses, Sandhagen hoped to land the matchup nonetheless and even personally requested it with the UFC brass. The promotion obviously opted to go in a different direction, however Sandhagen still hopes for an O’Malley clash in the future — presumably after “Sugar” meets the man who dethroned him, Merab Dvalishvili, in a 2025 rematch.
“I just think would be a really big fight whenever it does happen,” Sandhagen said of O’Malley. “I think that O’Malley gets a rematch [with Dvalishvili next]. He’s kind of one of the UFC’s stars right now, and O’Malley’s worked really hard to do that in the other outside parts of fighting, and in the fighting too. He’s had some really awesome fights too. Then Merab and him, it was a little bit close. The vibe of that fight was that Merab was in control most of the time, but it was still a fairly competitive fight.
“I’m not going to hate on Sean for getting his rematch, but I just want to fight him because I want to fight some of the best guys in the world. Sean and Merab are the two guys in the top five that I haven’t fought yet, and really want to kind of see how I do against them.”
If the UFC does book O’Malley into an immediate title shot rematch against Dvalishvili, it’ll be a controversial booking for a handful of reasons. While not yet official, all signs indicate it’s on tap, with UFC CEO Dana White stating as recently as February that both want to fight each other. That was reason enough to book it, according to White. Ultimately, O’Malley only defended his title once before the lopsided loss to Dvalishvili, and another setback would put him in a bantamweight no man’s land of sorts.
But Sandhagen gets it. He understands how all roads led to this point, so he’s not allowing himself to get wrapped up in all the noise and make a stink about it.
“I don’t really waste my time being super annoyed or mad about the way that I know that it works,” Sandhagen said. “Some people have that stuff, then some people don’t. I get the luxury of always saying that I was myself. I never really cared about being famous or making a ton of money or anything in this sport. I literally just wanted to be the best in the world at fighting and say that I was that. So I am doing things differently, whether you like it or not. I feel like my fights speak pretty well for themselves.”
Sandhagen’s most recent opponent, Nurmagomedov, went on to challenge Dvalishvili in the champion’s first title defense this past January.
Plenty was made about Nurmagomedov’s record going into the title tilt and how Sandhagen was his only ranked win after 18 fights. Sandhagen felt Nurmagomedov firsthand, and despite not having faced Dvalishvili himself, he believed the title tilt was always destined to be a wake-up call for the dominant Dagestani.
“I feel like Merab was always going to win that fight,” Sandhagen said. “Merab was picking up a lot of steam. You can kind of tell when you’re watching a fight who’s fighting better than the other person even if they win a couple rounds or lose a couple rounds, or at least I feel like I sometimes can. That doesn’t always mean they’re going to win, but it’s like when you watch any other sport, like, ‘Whoa, that team’s playing good.’ Even if the other team is doing some good stuff, keeping the score really close, you can kind of see that on a long enough timeline what’s going to kind of happen, and I feel like that’s what happened in that Merab vs. Umar fight.
“All the credit to the both of them, it was an amazing fight. I think that Umar was dead tired going into those last two rounds, and he kind of tucked out a couple of them. Then Merab is just an absolute animal in being able to fight at that pace and just keep composure, and do his thing in all of the rounds too. So good on both of them, I thought it was an awesome fight, but I don’t think [Nurmagomedov’s] hand break had anything to do with it.”
