Cory Sandhagen reacts to Marlon Vera’s performance against Sean O’Malley at UFC 299: “Had no business being in the cage”

By Susan Cox - March 13, 2024

Cory Sandhagen is reacting to Marlon Vera’s performance against Sean O’Malley in the main event of UFC 299.

Marlon Vera, Cory Sandhagen

The UFC 299 main event consisted of a bantamweight title fight rematch between current champion O’Malley (18-1 MMA) and Marlon Vera (23-9 MMA). The outcome was a unanimous decision victory or ‘Suga’.

Vera had previously fought and defeated O’Malley by TKO back in August of 2020 at UFC 252, handing ‘Suga’ his first and only loss in the Octagon.

It was during a recent video uploaded to his YouTube channel that Cory Sandhagen (17-4 MMA) reflected on the fight last Saturday night saying:

“‘Chito’ obviously had no business being in the cage with O’Malley. Really tough showing by ‘Chito.’ Awesome performance by O’Malley, gotta give the guy all the credit in the world. Although, he was fighting like, a homeless-looking ‘Chito.’ … ‘Chito’ was pretty much just a punching bag… He’s not that good. That sounded really mean, but it’s kinda true.”

Continuing, ‘Sandman’ acknowledged the fight was ‘unbelievably uncompetitive’ (h/t MMANews):

“I’m gonna try to spend this whole breakdown not sh*tting on ‘Chito’ the whole time, but it’s probably gonna turn into me sh*tting on ‘Chito’ the whole time. That fight really frustrated because it was, one, just unbelievably uncompetitive. Two, I feel like a dummy for thinking that ‘Chito’ was gonna do better… Three, I just think that it’s not that cool that ‘Chito’ even got that opportunity to begin with. That’s what we all should have seen coming. I don’t know why I bought into the ‘Chito’ hype.”

Cory Sandhagen, 31, last fought and defeated Rob Font (20-8 MMA) by unanimous decision last August. Sandhagen knows a thing or two about ‘Chito’, as he fought and defeated him in March of last year by split-decision.

Do you agree with Sandhagen’s comments regarding ‘Chito’s performance against O’Malley at UFC 299?

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