Studying the Sandman: An Analysis of Cory Sandhagen
[Originally published July 2021]
What is Cory Sandhagen trying to do and how does he win fights?
Cory Sandhagen is trying to stick and move. He lands heavy and gets out of the way, resetting before reengaging. Sandhagen is interesting in that he tends to throw one heavy strike before moving out of the way. He does not really throw combinations. Occasionally he will double up or triple a jab but for the most part he throws one heavy strike. Sandhagen uses throwaway strikes, inside leg kicks and jabs, to set up his fight-ending ones.
One of the pillars of his game is creating angles, Sandhagen is almost always moving and looking for angles. He generally accomplishes this through circling his opponents and working up and down. Sandhagen also uses stance switching to create angles and force resets from his opposition. Especially in the Moraes fight, almost every time Sandhagen switches stance, Moraes resets. Providing Sandhagen with the perfect opportunity to land one of his heavy strikes.
His jab is primarily used to disrupt timing and create space for himself. He has a pretty long reach for 135 at 70 inches, about 3 inches more than most bantamweights. Because of this, he controls range with his jab very well. While it may not be the most damaging jab in the game, it effectively creates space and backs his opponents up. Another way he creates space is with feints. His feinting game is nothing astounding but it is still effective. Rather than feint with one body part such as a hip or a shoulder, Sandhagen feints with his entire body. For lack of a better term I would say that Sandhagen feints like a teenager, throwing his entire body at his opponent and leaning in with his entire upper body and lead leg.
While it was not super effective in the Assuncao fight, it worked wonderfully against Moraes. Moraes bit on it for the majority of the 1st round and even parts of the second leading up to the finish. Sandhagen also has very high level footwork and also uses it to create space. By constantly moving and using his jab he is able to have complete control over the range of the fight, keeping it exactly where he wants it. He constantly dances in and out of range, which incidentally serves as one of the layers of his takedown defense.
The other pillar of Sandhagen’s offense is his innate ability to disrupt his opponent’s timing. This works hand in hand with his angle work to create holes in his opponent’s defense. I would claim that this is his best trait after watching these past fights. Time and time again, Sterling not included, he makes his opponents visibly uncomfortable inside the octagon with him. He always catches them off guard and in between resets, lending heavy kicks and hooks in the time between. Almost any time he has success, it is because he was able to successfully break up his opponent’s rhythm and take advantage of it. He is very good at mixing up his own timing, as well as his opponents. Sometimes he waits 3 seconds after resetting, sometimes he throws immediately. One of the ways he is able to consistently stay in control of the pace of the fight is by being the initiator. Sandhagen has a reputation of being a counter puncher but I believe that that is actually a misnomer. While he certainly can counterstrike, he does his best work when he throws first. Being in control of the tempo of the fight is a huge advantage to have when trying to disrupt timing and Sandhagen makes sure he has that advantage every time. Everything is done to create an opening in his opponent’s guard before throwing one of his many heavy strikes through that opening. Another way Sandhagen works to throw his opponent’s off is with his feet. He has exceptional movement but he is especially adept at moving in quickly and closing distance. Oftentimes he will use his long legs and stride to immediately get into close range. This usually forces his opponents into either backing out as quickly as possible or throwing a panic strike and getting easily countered. Here we can see Moraes quickly retreating as Cory moves in with one big step and eating some punishment for it. Now he rarely actually initiates a clinch but if this ability were to be paired with a serious elbow game like Leon Edwards, he would become that much more dangerous. However, this is just another tool he uses to disrupt his opponents’ rhythm.
Sandhagen throws heavy strikes with the intent to do serious damage. These are almost never thrown lightly or “just to touch” his opposition. Of the 8 on this list I would put the lead hook to the body, outside leg kick, and rear body kick as his most used, with the flying knee in there as an honorable mention. One clear pattern from here is that most of these strikes come from his lead hand and his rear leg. He only uses his rear hand for the occasional cross and his lead leg is occasionally used for a quick inside leg kick. Sandhagen possesses the ability to end a fight with any one of these shots. His spinning attacks in general are very well concealed and rarely telegraphed. His wheel kick, spinning back kick, and spinning back elbow are all some of his best strikes and they appear to be very well polished and practiced. He is also very accurate with all of his strikes, although the numbers do seem to disagree with me on that as he only has a 48% accuracy on significant strikes. I think it is that he simply throws at a very high volume because he still lands an absurd 6.85 significant strikes per minute. For context, that means that he lands the 10th most significant strikes per minute across all male weight classes in the UFC.
The last part of Sandhagen’s game I wanted to touch on was his defense. His defense is very heavily movement based, he is constantly moving away and circling around his opponents. He has pretty good head movement but the majority of the time he avoids strikes by moving away or backing out. While he is looking to create angles of attack he often leans his head to one side. Which in turn keeps his head off the centerline for most exchanges, a good habit he has developed.
What does he struggle with/what are his weaknesses?
As you can imagine, Sandhagen does not have too many weaknesses, his offense is as close to impeccable as you can get. His defense on the other hand, does have some holes in it. One of these is his tendency to retreat straight backwards. Lots of times when he is pressured he tries to escape as quickly as possible. Unfortunately sometimes this means that he does so in a straight line.
Sterling was able to take advantage of this, Moraes was not. Which brings up the second point, pressure. Sandhagen is most comfortable when he is the initiator, when someone gets in his face and starts running him into the cage you can see his game start to fall apart a bit. In both the Assuncao and Sterling fights, most of their successes came from when they pressured Sandhagen and forced him to respond to their attacks. In this Sterling sequence you can see Aljo immediately get in Cory’s grill and back him up to the fence. Aljo has reasonable head movement so he avoids the flurry and then shoots. Speaking of that, Sandhagen’s takedown defense certainly leaves a lot to be desired. A takedown defense of 30% is not something you want to see in a potential title contender. That stat does worry me quite a bit, especially with Petr Yan sitting at the top of the division. On the ground, Sandhagen is a little lackluster as well. He often seems content to stay on the ground and just try to avoid taking too much punishment while avoiding submissions. Initiating a scramble if the opportunity arises, but not forcing that opportunity himself.
Now while he has solid head movement and excellent movement, he does tend to make himself hittable. Because of how much he commits to his strikes, lots of times he puts himself out there to be countered. A good counter puncher with above average defense would likely be able to take advantage of this and potentially land a big shot. Sandhagen has not really shown himself to have a weak chin but with how hard the top of bantamweight hits I do not think he wants to test that. Sandhagen really commits to his power shots but that does unfortunately leave him open to his opponent’s power shot. Another pattern I noticed, at least in the Moraes fight, is that he can fall in love with a strike and a smart opponent can craft a counter to that. In the Moraes fight, Sandhagen began throwing the lead hook to the body very frequently. Moraes picked up on this and began countering consistently.
Because of how heavily his defense relies on his movement, someone with excellent cage cutting skills could definitely take advantage of that. We saw Sterling do that about a year ago and once again, Petr Yan waits at the top.
Special thanks to u/StarCrossedShabelle, @EdwardGalloMMA and @Tanthiram for their help with this piece!