Cory Sandhagen thought he ended a sparring partner’s life after leaving him vomiting from a knee to the head.
UFC bantamweight contender Cory Sandhagen is in ‘war mode’ ahead of his return to the cage against Deiveson Figueiredo at UFC Des Moines in May. Sandhagen returns after suffering a unanimous decision loss to former title challenger Umar Nurmagomedov last year in Abu Dhabi.
Sandhagen is known as one of the most dangerous strikers in the UFC bantamweight division; earning wild knockouts against the likes of Marlon Moraes and Frankie Edgar. His flying knee knockout of Edgar was a ‘Knockout of the Year’ candidate in 2021.
Sandhagen is laser-focused on Figueiredo and working towards a potential title shot. In a recent sparring session with one of his teammates, Sandhagen’s intensity was overloaded.
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‘Gym Bully’ Cory Sandhagen admitted he thought he killed a recent sparring partner
During a recent appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show, Sandhagen explained how he left a recent sparring partner vomiting after landing a brutal knee.
“I can be a gym bully a little bit,” Sandhagen admitted. “We get better by beating each other up, and that dude, that’s actually one of my main training partners and a guy I coach pretty closely…Connor [Owens] had a fight coming up, so I wasn’t going easy on him on that day…
“I swear to god, I had a moment where I thought that I had killed someone and it really scared me because after that happened…when I looked and saw straight blood. I thought ‘Do I call the cops or rush him to the hospital right away?’, and I see that he was laughing and my brain didn’t know what to do.”
It turns out that Connor Owens, an amateur MMA fighter, drank beet juice before his spar with Sandhagen and that’s what he was vomiting instead of blood. But Sandhagen had an instantaneous somber reaction to landing the knee on Owens and feared for the worst.
Luckily, Owens remains on track for his professional debut at Fury FC 103 later this month. Sandhagen faces Figueiredo just weeks later on May 3rd.
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Cory Sandhagen is knocking on the door of a title shot entering UFC Des Moines
As Sandhagen prepares for UFC Des Moines, he has the chance to earn himself a title shot in defeating Figueiredo. UFC bantamweight champion Merab Dvalishvili and Sean O’Malley could clash in a rematch later this year, with top contenders like Sandhagen waiting in the wings.
Dvalishvili broke Georges St-Pierre’s all-time UFC record for takedowns in his most recent win over Nurmagomedov. He earned the belt by outpointing O’Malley at UFC 306 last September.
UFC CEO Dana White recently hinted that the Dvalishvili vs. O’Malley rematch was the next bantamweight title fight booking. But as of this writing, nothing has been announced by the promotion.
Sandhagen is ramping up the intensity ahead of his Figueiredo clash, and he’s training with a chip on his shoulder after suffering one of his lone UFC defeats.
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