Cory Sandhagen wants a do-over against Petr Yan.

Sandhagen, the fourth-ranked UFC bantamweight, has faced a who’s-who of 135-pound contenders since making his debut for the organisation all the way back in 2018. But after dropping a decision to the unbeaten Umar Nurmagomedov in his last outing in the cage back in August, Sandhagen has set his sights on gaining revenge over another fighter that holds a win over him to be used as a platform to get back into title talk for Merab Dvalishvili’s world title.

“It was a really interesting fight,” Sandhagen said on his YouTube channel of Petr Yan’s win over Deiveison Figueiredo from last weekend’s UFC event in Macao, China, according to MMA Junkie. Yan holds an October 2021 decision win over the American.

“Yan looked amazing, to be honest,” he said. “I kind of figured that the fight would go the way that it was just because Figgy [Figueiredo] is more chaotic, square version. Yan is a much bladed, technical guy.

“That’s not a knock on Figgy. Figgy usually makes his chaos work, but you kind of saw that that’s the way the fight was going to go. Congrats to Yan, he looked really great. Figgy is a really good matchup for him to look really good in specifically.”

A rematch between Sandhagen and Yan makes sense on paper. Both are clearly top-level fighters in their division but have both been on the wrong end of some results in recent fights. A win for either would propel them back towards the summit of the division. Defeat for either, though, and it’s a long road back to the top.

“Congrats to Yan, maybe we’ll do it next,” Sandhagen said. “I don’t really know what the division’s going on. I haven’t really heard too much. I was hoping to hear probably sometime next week about the direction that they are going to go in because I know they were waiting on this fight to play out. Congrats to Yan. I still want to get that one back. We’ll see if it’ll be next or not.”