Cory Sandhagen will face up to the challenge of Rob Font in the catchweight (140 lb) main event of a UFC Fight Night, set for the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, on Sunday.
Sandhagen (16-4) is chasing a third successive win after victories over Song Yadong and Marlon Vera in his last two trips to the Octagon in September 2022 and March of this year respectively.
The 31-year-old ‘Sandman’ was originally scheduled to face Umar Nurmagomedov, but the latter pulled out of the fight due to injury, leading to a replacement opponent and a move to the catchweight status of 140 lb.
Sandhagen is hopeful that a greater rounding to his MMA abilities will help him become a title contender again (having lost out to Petr Yan for the interim bantamweight championship in 2021):
“One thing that I do particularly well compared to a lot of the other guys in the UFC is I make people's brains have to process a lot of information,” he said.
“I think adding wrestling just made it so that I can kind of double-down on something that I already do really well (kick-boxing). The goal is to make (wrestling) a legitimate threat so that I can just clog up people's processing speed even more than I think that I already do. I think that that's going to make for a hell of a competitor in the future.”
Font (20-6) is coming off a first-round TKO win over Adrian Yanez in April of this year and is looking to continue climbing the bantamweight rankings.
“Obviously a win is huge, but I’ve got to get back to that finish to kind of have people wanting to see me more than anybody else,” Font explained.
“I think if I can go out there and get an impressive knockout, an impressive finish or even just an impressive fight, I think – I’ll be consistent with two finishes – I’ll be in that conversation. It just sucks that I am fighting backwards. This gets me close, but it’s not the one.”
The rest of the main card features Jessica Andrade taking on Tatiana Suarez in a women’s strawweight co-main; a light heavyweight battle between Dustin Jacoby and Nigeria’s Kennedy Nzechukwu; Diego Lopes v Gavin Tucker in the featherweight division; another light heavyweight clash pits Tanner Boser against Aleksa Camur; and the card opens with a lightweight match between Ignacio Bahamondes and Ludovic Klein.
UFC Fight Night: Sandhagen v Font – Main card
- Main event: Bantamweight: Cory Sandhagen v Rob Font
- Women’s strawweight: Jessica Andrade v Tatiana Suarez
- Light heavyweight: Dustin Jacoby v Kennedy Nzechukwu
- Featherweight: Diego Lopes v Gavin Tucker
- Light heavyweight: Tanner Boser v Aleksa Camur
- Lightweight: Ignacio Bahamondes v ludovit Klein