UFC on ESPN 43 Aftermath: How Cory Sandhagen’s Volume Muffled Marlon Vera

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Cory Sandhagen took a smooth victory over Marlon Vera in the UFC on ESPN 43 headliner despite a bizarre scorecard that made the result a split decision on Saturday at the AT&T Center in San Antonio. Sandhagen showed a different side of himself, as he adopted a wrestling-heavy approach, neutralized most of the big shots from Vera and controlled the fight.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the best parts of Sandhagen’s performance:

DIVISION I ‘SANDMAN’

When you talk about Sandhagen, his striking generally comes to mind. He switches stances constantly and lands a variety of strikes with tons of volume. While we did get that version of him at UFC on ESPN 43, it was not what stood out. His wrestling really made the biggest impression on the night.

It was the wrestling at the start that set the tone for the entire fight and allowed Sandhagen to strike freely as time wore on. The rather unexpected threat of the takedown put Vera on his heels from the first shot. Unable to stop Sandhagen’s advances initially, Vera was forced to deal with the threat of more takedowns in Round 3 on. This made Sandhagen a legitimate threat to change levels and got Vera to lower his hands and overreact. All of this opened up shots for Sandhagen.

To set this tone from the midpoint of the fight, Sandhagen came forward with hand feints first, knowing Vera would not buy his shooting just yet. Once Sandhagen found his opening with a single-leg takedown, he managed to push Vera against the fence. Correctly, Vera grabbed the whizzer, or overhook, which brings us to our first diagram.

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As mentioned, (1) Sandhagen pressed Vera to the fence. You can see Vera with the whizzer on the right arm of Sandhagen. This prevented Sandhagen from taking down “Chito” with a body lock due to Vera’s pulling up on the Elevation Fight Team rep’s arm. To counter this, Sandhagen knew Vera was pulling up and raising his center of gravity. He used this to his advantage and reaped his right leg around Vera’s left. (2) Once reaped, Sandhagen could pull Vera over that reaping leg and (3) create the sweep. (4) Vera had no choice but to go to the ground for the first time on the night.

Sandhagen has been dying to show off his grappling skills more since his loss to current champion Aljamain Sterling in 2020. There, he was promptly taken down and choked out in just under a minute and a half. Sandhagen has apparently taken that to heart, and I suspected his grappling was quite improved. He had mentioned it in several past fights since and managed to show it off against Vera.

It was not just his ability to get to the ground that Sandhagen displayed. Once on the mat, he managed to land some decent ground-and-pound that forced Vera to hold on to stop the barrage. With that said, Sandhagen and his camp recognized the threat Vera posed from his back. Triangles and armbars are always in play with Vera from the bottom. To deal with that, Sandhagen did something quite crafty. He intentionally turned Vera around in his guard, pointed him to the fence, bundled him up and gave him less room to work.

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The next diagram takes place shortly after the takedown from Figure 1. After the takedown, Sandhagen could not stay in half guard as he hoped. Vera managed to get his hooks in for a butterfly guard and knee shield. After seeing Sandhagen was not letting him up easily, Vera (1) opted to go full guard and tried to control his counterpart. Sandhagen wanted to turn Vera away and into the fence to prevent him from firing those submission attempts and to make it harder for him to create space. (2) In our second frame, we see when Sandhagen started to spin. You can see in red that Vera held on to Sandhagen, trying to prevent ground-and-pound. It was here that Sandhagen put his hands on the ground and pivoted. Normally, this is a major no-no in grappling, and a submission artist like Mikey Musumechi or Gordon Ryan would snatch the arm faster than you can say “Sandman.” However, ground-and-pound forced Vera to hold on just long enough to keep Sandhagen safe from such submission attempts. (3) The turn was successful, as Sandhagen had Vera down and against the fence, with no ability to go backwards.

All in all, you can only be impressed with Sandhagen’s grappling and how he has improved since 2020. While he is no Bajrang Punia, Sandhagen has made a fantastic effort at becoming a better grappler, and it provided the foundation for how he won this fight.

STRIKING MECHANICS

No look at Sandhagen would be complete without a look at the fantastically complicated striking he brings to the table. With constant switching from southpaw to orthodox and back again many times a round, Sandhagen always has a bunch of tricks up his sleeve; and his outing at UFC on ESPN 43 was no different. He is a huge fan of the flying knee, and he utilized it several times in this fight, albeit to no avail.

A lot of what Sandhagen did to befuddle Vera involved the number of feints he used to throw him off. Already a low-volume striker, Vera had trouble picking his spots with so little to choose from due to all of Sandhagen’s no-faith efforts. On the feet, Sandhagen threw feints for the sake of feinting and had Vera on the back foot, unable able to plant like he prefers. In contrast to Rob Font, who throws with similarly high volume, Sandhagen came in at multiple angles in tandem with his stance switching. This made it harder for Vera to know when to actually throw. It worked like a charm. Once the takedown and the volume was set by Sandhagen, he was free for some big shots.

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I talked previously about Jose Aldo and how his specific lead hook to the body did well to open up the right in his fight with Vera. Sandhagen obviously saw the same opening, either in tape study or naturally through the course of the fight. In Figure 3, (1) Sandhagen matched Vera’s orthodox stance with their left hands forward. He then waited on Vera’s jab to slip. (2) Sandhagen slipped to the inside of the jab from Vera, which naturally loaded up the lead hook and let Sandhagen get a good spot on the strike. (3) The lead hook landed just under Vera’s dropped elbow, just as it did for Aldo. When the hook landed, Vera (4) instinctively dropped his elbow, which opened up the right cross, again, just like Aldo.

While Sandhagen’s offense was the second highlight of the fight for me, his standup defense was also superb. Being an all-around fighter allows Sandhagen more freedom on the feet, and his defense was part of that. We talked previously about how it was important for Vera to get Sandhagen less mobile and identified two ways he could go about doing so. First was pressuring Sandhagen to the fence. Sandhagen was the aggressor most of the fight, but Vera did find times to come forward. Once he got Sandhagen to the warning track, however, the Colorado native skirted out the side to where Vera could not work the body or the clinch. Denying Vera this position only made it tougher for him as the fight went on. Clinching became less and less of an option as the rounds got later, and Sandhagen started to flourish once this became known to both he and Vera.

The second pre-fight path we identified for Vera to slow Sandhagen down was the calf kick. Being so mobile requires the legs, and if Vera could touch and hurt the legs, he would likely win. To counter, Sandhagen decided to take the tried-and-true crowd the kicker tactic by coming forward and landing 28 of 31 low kicks himself. Sandhagen also checked many of the kicks; he retracted his legs and was just not there for Vera to hit all night.

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With the stance switching being so integral to Sandhagen, he often finds opportunities to switch in different ways than most. With Jared Cannonier facing Israel Adesanya, we saw a deliberate switching of Cannonier’s stances that was not quite natural. Sandhagen finds the opportunity to switch at will. In the Figure 4, we see just one of those moments. (1) We are once again in a bladed stance but with Sandhagen and Vera in southpaw this time. Vera is keen on the oblique kick to the knee to hurt his opponents and tried that here. (2) Vera nearly caught Sandhagen. Instead of eating the kick, Sandhagen pulled his lead leg back. Most fighters who do not fight out of both southpaw and orthodox stances will pull the leg back and then return to their preferred stance. Sandhagen instead (3) stepped all the way back and into orthodox. It was a free stance switch, and Sandhagen found moments like this all night to switch stances and keep Vera calculating. It was a night of paralysis by analysis for Vera, just as Sandhagen designed it.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s bantamweight division is exceptional these days. With Merab Dvalishvili and Sean O’Malley at the top, the return of Henry Cejudo and new blood like Adrian Yanez and Umar Nurmagomedov, there are so many compelling matchups. Sandhagen, now 30, needs to get one more win for a title shot that has been a long time coming. While he called out Dvalishvili, the fight nerd in me wants to see Sandhagen-O’Malley for the most stance switches in a single UFC fight.