Cory Sandhagen vs Song Yadong to headline UFC Fight Night 211

Cory Sandhagen vs Song Yadong to headline UFC Fight Night 211

UFC Fight Night 211 has been growing in depth over the last several days, as we’ve just been informed of a third bout that’s been added to the card, a bantamweight headliner between no. 4 ranked Cory Sandhagen and no. 9 ranked Song Yadong.

The other two bouts on the card thus far are both featherweight contests, one between Pat Sabatini and Damon Jackson, the other between Andre Fili and Lando Vannata.

UFC Fight Night 211 is to go down on September 17, 2022, live from a to-be-determined venue.

Cory Sandhagen has hit a bit of a rough patch as of late, losing his last two bouts, going 2-3 over his last five.

Once arriving in the UFC back in January of 2018, ‘The Sandman’ would quickly go 5-0 inside the octagon in less than two years time leading into his fight with current UFC bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling.

Sterling, to our surprise, melted right through Sandhagen, submitting (rear naked choke) him in just 88 seconds.

Sandhagen then secured back-to-back victories over the likes of former WSOF bantamweight champion Marlon Moraes (TKO) and former UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar (KO).

This set him up for a bout opposing the returning former champion TJ Dillashaw, who defeated him via split decision. The crowd has certainly been mixed when regarding this result; many believe Dillashaw won, and many believe Sandhagen won.

Nonetheless, he’d fight for the interim title in his next bout against another former bantamweight champion, this time Petr Yan, just a few short months later, losing the five-round unanimous decision and dropping his record to 14-4.

Song Yadong on the other hand came to the UFC back in the end of 2017, where he too went undefeated in the promotion throughout his first handful of fights.

After winning his first four octagon bouts, Yadong would battle to a controversial draw with Cody Stamann, before battling to another controversial scorecard, this one against Marlon Vera.

Though most believe Vera won that fight, Yadong was awarded the victory nonetheless, and would be defeated by Kyler Phillips in his next outing.

Since then, Yadong has won his last three-straight over the likes of Casey Kenney (SD), Julio Arce (TKO), and Marlon Moraes (KO), improving his record to 19-5-1-1. The Chinese prodigy is still just 24 years old as well, and this marks the first time he’s been scheduled for five rounds.

Who do you see coming out of this epic bantamweight clash on top?

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Brady Ordway
I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was scrolling through the channels and landed upon Versus, where WEC was televised. Urijah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. That's the first fight I ever saw, and I was immediately hooked. So eventually, I began covering the sport in the fourth quarter of 2018, and have since started writing about animals as well. If you'd like to see those pieces, be sure to check out learnaboutnature.com!