Cory Sandhagen thinks Petr Yan 'will definitely' beat Aljamain Sterling in rematch
Cory Sandhagen has no doubt that Petr Yan will reclaim the UFC bantamweight championship.
Yan lost his title to Aljamain Sterling by disqualification after he struck Sterling with an illegal knee last month at UFC 259. As a result, the pair is expeted to run things back but not until the end of the year after Sterling underwent neck surgery.
Waiting in the wings is Sandhagen (14-2 MMA, 7-1 UFC), who faces former two-time bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw on May 8 in the UFC on ESPN 24 main event. The fight also is expected to be a No. 1 contender fight.
While his title hopes could be pushed to next year with the delay of the Yan (15-2 MMA, 7-1 UFC) vs. Sterling (20-3 MMA, 12-3 UFC) rematch, Sandhagen said it’ll only give him more time and footage to study both men.
“You want to give Aljamain kinda the benefit of the doubt, just because the way the fight happened,” Sandhagen told MMA Junkie. “But it’s kind of hard to give the guy the benefit of the doubt the way that he’s acting after his fight, but if he needs neck surgery, he needs neck surgery. I’m not gonna speculate on it too much. It’s more about me and focusing on what I can do. … It wasn’t as discouraging as it was kind of just a bit annoying.”
He continued, “As far as the fight goes, I learned a lot by watching both of those guys in the fact that I think they both showed some holes that I think were pretty obvious, and I’m excited to watch them fight again just from a strategy standpoint where I can see some more holes and just develop a better and better game plan for when it’s time to fight one of them.”
Sterling, who holds a quick submission win over Sandhagen, tried to replicate his relentless pace on Yan in the first couple of rounds. He was the busier striker but started to slow down in the latter rounds, where Yan took over completely by dropping Sterling and repeatedly dragging him down to the mat.
He appeared en route to beating Sterling before throwing the illegal knee, and Sandhagen expects Yan to get the best of Sterling in the rematch.
“Yeah, I think Yan will definitely beat him in the next one,” Sandhagen said. “The way that the fight was going, Aljamain was coming at him with his heaviest artillery, and he couldn’t really get anything going, and Yan took it like a champ until he made a really terrible decision. Definitely Aljamain was losing in my opinion, and if I win the belt like that, I would likely be acting in a very different way. I think that I would be pretty upset because I was losing, not because I got DQ’d, but easier said than done I guess.”
He continued, “The knee looked flagrant. I don’t think it gets too much more looking flagrant than that, so Yan definitely didn’t make a good decision, and I think he kind of deserves to get stripped with such a flagrant knee and just an awkward fight in general. It was just a weird, not great fight.”