{"id":20908,"date":"2025-07-24T16:20:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T16:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/20908\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T16:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T16:20:07","slug":"video-cory-sandhagen-slaps-trolls-counting-him-out-against-merab-dvalishvili","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/20908\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: Cory Sandhagen slaps trolls counting him out against Merab Dvalishvili"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cory Sandhagen<\/a> has an answer for all the critics counting him out before he even steps into the cage with Merab Dvalishvili<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, it was officially announced that Sandhagen (18-5) is booked to challenge Dvalishvili (20-4) for the undisputed bantamweight title in the co-main event of UFC 320<\/a> on Oct. 4 in Las Vegas. Dvalishvili is on a 13-fight win streak, including two straight successful title defenses, and will head into his matchup with Sandhagen as a heavy favorite to retain again.<\/p>\n

In response to fans doubting his chances, Sandhagen released a video skit on Instagram mocking trolls and stating why he\u2019s confident he can pull off the upset.<\/p>\n

Watch the clip below.<\/p>\n

The skit starts with Sandhagen playing a stereotypical troll, shouting in Sandhagen\u2019s face, telling him, \u201cJust want to let you know that you have absolutely no chance to beat Merab.\u201d<\/p>\n

The troll continues, \u201cYou\u2019re not going to do good. He\u2019s going to win the belt, you\u2019re not going to win the belt, you\u2019re just a stupid boy. … He\u2019s going to whoop you so bad,\u201d and then begins chanting, \u201cYou\u2019re going to die\u201d and calls Sandhagen \u201cdelusional.\u201d<\/p>\n

That last comment snaps Sandhagen into focus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all delusional, OK?\u201d Sandhagen says. \u201cJust because you haven\u2019t worked hard at something and you don\u2019t need to believe in yourself doesn\u2019t mean that I can\u2019t, alright?\u201d<\/p>\n

When the troll continues to berate him, Sandhagen responds by slapping the troll across the face, prompting his antagonist to cry out for his mother.<\/p>\n

Sandhagen has long been one of the top-ranked bantamweights in the world, but he has fallen short in No. 1 contender bouts on more than one occasion. Aljamain Sterling<\/a>, T.J. Dillashaw<\/a>, Petr Yan<\/a>, and Umar Nurmagomedov<\/a> are the past four fighters to defeat Sandhagen and all four went on to compete for undisputed UFC gold after facing him.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old has persisted, winning four of his past five bouts, and rebounding from a loss to Nurmagomedov by defeating Deiveson Figueiredo<\/a> this past May to position himself as the next challenger for Dvalishvili.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cory Sandhagen has an answer for all the critics counting him out before he even steps into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[4625,49,48,17637,17640,17642,641,700,1621,701,17641,638,4637,17638,5369,82,17639,640,702,1062,3194],"class_list":["post-20908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-against","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cory","tag-counting","tag-dvalishvili","tag-fighting","tag-front-page","tag-him","tag-latest-news","tag-merab","tag-mma","tag-out","tag-sandhagen","tag-slaps","tag-sports","tag-trolls","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-video","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}