UFC Bantamweight Cory Sandhagen is targeting his long-awaited return to the cage later this year, and believes it could be for the title.
Sandhagen has not competed since August 2023, when he met Rob Font. After the decision win, Sandhagen revealed he had fought the majority of the contest with one arm, and it was then discovered he would require surgery.
Speaking to Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Sandhagen gave an update on his recovery and detailed a realistic timeline of when fans could see ‘Sandman’ back fighting. He said:
“It healed really, really quickly. I was really happy with the amount of skills that I was able to add into my tool belt in this time that I've been hurt, I've been training fairly hard on it. I still have to baby it here and there. You know, it gets kind of sore towards the end of the week and then it being a lot colder in Colorado.
“Now it's kind of gets like a little bit more sore in the cold, which is interesting. But yeah, healings going really good. I think that I can probably feel really comfortable jumping into a camp here in the next maybe like month or so. I mean, you add two months on top of that. I think three or four months from now, I think that I'll be in a really golden spot and ready to perform under the lights again in.”
As it transpired, Sandhagen had to undergo two surgeries in order to fully repair the injury but now he admits the arm feels better than ever.
“I had the tricep repair and then two months after that, I had an elbow scope because the elbow scope is more or less what was causing a bunch of inflammation in that joint that made it get infected. And then after it got infected, that's kind of what made the joint really weak going into the fight, which caused the tricep to tear even more.
“ So I got two surgeries and so now this thing is feeling pretty good. It goes a lot straighter than it ever has. And, and yeah, I'm close to 100% strength in it, so it's going all good.”
The 135lbs belt will be on the line at UFC 298 when champion, Sean O’Malley looks to make his first defence against the only man ever to beat him, Marlon ‘Chito’ Vera. Although left frustrated by his last outing, ‘Sandman’ still believes that he could warrant the next title shot at the Bantamweight championship, with interesting narratives & fights to be made with whoever is the champion post UFC 298. He said:
“You want you want one big fight going into the title fight so that there's some momentum. The UFC wants that. I want that. And just, you know, due to an injury, I kind of wasn't really able to do that, that level of performance. So, you know, all that set aside, that's kind of something completely out of my control.
“I think I beat Chito less than 365 days ago, me and O'Malley is definitely one of the most exciting fights that you can certainly make, maybe in the UFC, like in the top five, top ten most exciting matchups that are that could potentially happen. You have two guys in their prime that have really exciting styles. That would be an awesome matchup.
“So I have a lot of hope and I feel like I feel like the fans really want to watch me and O'Malley fight if he comes out with the win and then if Cheeto wins, that's an easy argument for myself to being that I 5-0’d him less than 365 days ago.”
