Despite the atrocious scorecard by one judge, Cory Sandhagen dominated and shut down Marlon Vera for five rounds. In a post-fight interview with Ariel Helwani, Helwani asked if Sandhagen gained anything from watching Dominick Cruz vs. Marlon Vera since, at surface level, Sandhagen and Cruz have similar styles.
However, things can look incidentally similar while having drastically different intentions, priorities, and systems.
Cruz and Sandhagen are both tall and long fighters who move a lot, wrestle, and switch stances. But where they differ is in how they apply those elements.
Consider basketball. There are a million different techniques called the "jump shot." As a result, you can have two vastly different players relying on the jump shot.
Dominick Cruz uses similar skills to Sandhagen but adapts them in different ways. Cruz uses them defensively. Sandhagen, on the other hand, uses his skills to control time-space.
Rather than time-space, Cruz relies on his defensive movements to keep him safe and score despite what's happening to his space. To make up for lost time-space, Cruz exaggerates his movements.
For example, since his opponent is too close, Cruz doesn't have enough time and space to throw a straight punch, so he moves his upper body outside of his opponent's shoulders to create the room and time to swing an unorthodox hook.
Sandhagen dictates the distance, which is from further away. From further away, he can see his opponent's whole body and movements. Making up that space costs his opponent time. The farther away you are, the longer it takes to get close. You are slow.
Sandhagen has tools to score from the outside, and when his opponents try to get close, Sandhagen has the head start to move and counter.
Defense works best with time-space, whereas controlling time-space, even without "defense," will keep you relatively safe.
Cruz also tends to stand square to move laterally or ducks to get low, bending over at the waist. Despite switching stances, Sandhagen always maintains his stance and doesn't duck down. He often stands tall (which got him in trouble against Aljamain Sterling).
Sandhagen wasn't saying he was different from Cruz to be contrarian but rather for accuracy.
I've transcribed Sandhagen's response below. This rare gem gives us a glimpse into Sandhagen's strategy.
"[M]e and Dom are a lot different. Like we do similar things. Like we both move our feet really well, but I fight from a much different distance than Dom does, and I have a much different stance than Dom has. So I was really curious to see how 'Chito' [Marlon Vera] was gonna try to close that gap because I definitely fight a lot longer than Dom too, and I knew that that was gonna be something that was different.
Also, where 'Chito' and Dom were fighting, Dom doesn't use things from the outside to pick at his opponents and be leading in the scoring piece of the fight. But Dom will like rush in, and he'll have to close that gap in order to land something good, where I don't really have to close any gap in order to be landing anything good, which is like a giant difference [between] me and Dom.
So I figured that that would make a really big difference if I just didn't close that gap for 'Chito.' I knew that he was gonna have a giant problem trying to find out how [to] get close to me. And he definitely was having a ton of issues trying to do so."
There's another piece of the interview that I didn't include but worth mentioning. At the start of the interview, Helwani asked Sandhagen how he felt about Vera saying it'll be about who wants it more. It's the same thing Justin Gaethje said before his title fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov. Sandhagen had the same observations as Nurmagomedov, that at this level, it's not about how bad you want it, but rather, it's about your preparation, your conditioning, and how much you've learned and improved.
Despite what you've heard, it's not only about toughness and heart. It's about repetition and practice, and access to repetition and practice. False confidence can be inborn, but true confidence is trust in your training.
⁂
(If you like my work, please support me on Patreon or make a one-time donation on Ko-fi. Find Southpaw at its website. Get the swag at Spring. Also check out Liberation Martial Arts Online.)
Tape Study: Defense vs. Time-Space