“The recognition is something that I never stress myself about because I knew it was going to come in time,” Sandhagen said. “Some people get really cool knockouts early in their career, they become famous, a lot of eyes get on them really early, and then for other people, it happens later. For me, it happened a few fights in, but that’s something I never lost any sleep over because I knew and I know how good I am, and I really believe, as long as I stay working hard and I stay consistent, the truth will always be revealed, and I really do believe I’m the best.”
Independent of the high-stakes nature of the fight, Sandhagen versus Yan is a fight fan’s dream. The two are technically savvy, entertaining fighters who come into the fight on good form despite both coming off losses. Yan and Sandhagen rank third and fourth in strikes landed per minute in bantamweight history, respectively, and Sandhagen believes they are two of the best strikers in the entire promotion.
Sandhagen is particularly complimentary of Yan’s killer mentality, which seems to come naturally to the Russian and is something he needed some time to learn.
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“I think me and Yan, we see some of this stuff the same,” Sandhagen said. “I think that he goes in there to try to take people’s heads off, and I go in there and try to take people’s heads off too. It’s not really this, ‘Let’s play by these rules’ type of things. When we touch gloves, we’re going to fight each other, and we’re going to simulate taking each other out as best as we can, and I definitely think that he does that just like I do that also.”
As thoughtful a fighter as any on the roster, Sandhagen believes what he learned against Dillashaw is going to benefit him greatly. Most prominently is in understanding the scoring aspect of it all. Although he enjoys the war-like aspect of mixed martial arts, he took away a greater understanding of the rules of the sport in terms of how judges look at things.
Of course, between he and Yan, it might not matter what the judges see.