Cory Sandhagen does not resonate with Sean O'Malley’s mentality.
O’Malley criticized Sandhagen for accepting to fight rising unbeaten contender Umar Nurmagomedov, who wound up withdrawing due to injury. He called him a gangster for it, but said it’s not smart business wise.
Sandhagen now faces Rob Font in Saturday’s UFC on ESPN 50 main event at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn. The card airs on ESPN and streams on ESPN+. Sandhagen (16-4 MMA, 9-3 UFC) responded to O’Malley’s (16-1 MMA, 8-1 UFC) criticism, and doesn’t agree with his business way of thinking.
“There are things about Sean O’Malley that I think are just super lame,” Sandhagen told CBS Sports. “(He’s) talking about things like, ‘You fight the worst guy for the most amount of money’ – everything being business decisions. I can’t connect with that type of thinking at all. To me, those are ways of thinking that are just weak and they’re ways of thinking that are going to trend into ruining the sport a little bit, in my opinion.”
O’Malley is one of the biggest stars on the UFC roster. He needed just one ranked win over Petr Yan to earn a shot at bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling in the UFC 292 headliner on Aug. 19.
Sandhagen is on a mission for gold himself, and is willing to take out whoever the UFC puts in front of him to prove he’s the best.
“You should want to fight the best guy,” Sandhagen continued. “If you’re here to be the actual world champion, that’s what we’re doing. I don’t see this as a business, really. I don’t see it as making a ton of money. I make good money now. I’m good. I’m not wealthy by any means. I don’t have money that’s going to last me until I die.
“But the greediness and the business decision things that happen in a lot of these ways of thinking, to me, are lame. I don’t think that passing on the message that you should fight the worst guy for the most amount of money – that is just such a weak way of thinking.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ESPN 50.
