According to [autotag]Cory Sandhagen[/autotag], a top UFC bantamweight contender declined to fight him.
Sandhagen, who’s coming off a main event loss to Umar Nurmagomedov at UFC on ABC 7 in August, said the UFC tried to match him up with [autotag]Deiveson Figueiredo[/autotag] (24-3-1 MMA, 13-3-1 UFC) at the end of the year.
“Figgy turned down the fight against me in September, which is just kind of whack because I thought that Figgy was a little bit more about that life than that,” Sandhagen said on his YouTube channel. “I’m kind of actually hurt that Figgy doesn’t want to fight me in December, but maybe he wants to take the easier fights. I don’t know what that dude’s plan is.”
Sandhagen (17-5 MMA, 10-4 UFC) initially campaigned to fight Sean O’Malley (18-1 MMA, 10-1 UFC) after he lost his bantamweight title to Merab Dvalishvili (18-4 MMA, 11-2 UFC) by unanimous decision in this past Saturday’s UFC 306 main event at Sphere in Las Vegas.
But upon hearing that O’Malley is set to undergo surgery Oct. 3 for a torn labrum in his hip, he’s a little disappointed.
“It’s really a bummer, man, because I was really hoping to get that fight one, and then two, the fans get really excited about fights like that, and that’s just a bummer that they don’t get to have that fight right now at least,” Sandhagen told Fanatics View. “But even in the future, you never really know what’s going to happen. It kind of reminds me of three or four years ago when people were really trying to hype up a me and Dominick Cruz fight.
“Cruz just never ended up taking the fight. He had other opportunities, and he took those ones. That’s just a bummer. I hope that’s not the case with this one and that the fans eventually get to watch me and O’Malley fight. … I’m not going to wait until the summer for O’Malley. No way. I like fighting. I was just out for an entire year. I really wanted to get something in December, but I think it’s realistically going to be a bit longer than that.”
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For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 306.