Cory Sandhagen

He closes flatly that the same man who won the first meeting remains the better fighter now, with no hedge on the outcome itself.

A solid, extremely well-rounded striker with super unorthodox movement (mostly an asset, occasionally the reason he gets caught), knees and elbows, a great flying knee, good volume and combinations, and an underused body-hook-to-leg-kick combo. His hands sit low and he is willing to back up, which the analyst calls 'not great' but hard to prepare for. He is pretty darn durable, having been rocked rarely and recovering well. His grappling is solid too: mixes takedowns with strikes, good control off his long limbs, good ground-and-pound elbows, sweeps, and a leg-lock fake he uses to get on top. This is a rematch; he won the first meeting and the analyst still rates him the better fighter.

States plainly he is taking Dvalishvili 'to get it done' on a named mechanism (relentless takedown volume negating skill-on-paper), keeping a separate rooting disclosure for Sandhagen out of that analytical call.

Technically the better striker of the two: unorthodox footwork, nasty knee strikes and sharp elbows including a flying knee, good volume and combinations, and a body-hook-to-leg-kick combo used often; he can be backed up and keeps his hands low. His grappling is also solid -- a good mix of takedowns off his strikes, good top control aided by long limbs, nasty ground-and-pound elbows and good sweeps that attack the legs.

At the pick he states plainly that Sandhagen edges the scorecards; the only caveats are about whether a finish happens, not about who wins, and earlier in the chapter he says he is sure about the output gap between them.

Super solid, unorthodox striker with good footwork and damaging, nasty knees and elbows off his long limbs, plus a flying knee he still carries even if he uses it less now; a distinctive body-hook-into-leg-kick combination is something the analyst especially likes. The analyst is very confident he will out-volume Figueiredo here. Good but not Figueiredo's level grappler who mixes takedowns with strikes and has good top control from his long limbs, but he can be controlled once flattened because he lacks the explosiveness/power to get back up against someone strong.

A concrete mechanism is given -- takedown reliability, backed by a real past-fight precedent of recovering from being hurt -- but it arrives wrapped in an explicit admission of having wavered on the call and that it could genuinely go the other way. That is a real hedge on the outcome itself, which keeps this at lean rather than clear; it stops short, though, of the explicit stay-away betting advice seen elsewhere on this card, which is what keeps those other bouts at coinflip instead.

An unorthodox, hard-to-read boxer whose damaging knees and elbows -- including a flying knee -- carry real cut risk, with a signature body-hook-into-leg-kick combination and solid output. His grappling is now rated a notch above where it sat before, with the analyst crediting clear improvement there specifically -- he blends takedowns with his striking, lands good elbows on top, and controls well using his reach. His known danger zone is being pressed back to the cage, where he becomes vulnerable to being taken down and, once flattened, controlled.

Explicit, named, method-specific commitment: he states he favors Sandhagen to win this one (seg 13), then predicts a TKO specifically from accumulated damage (seg 14), and repeats the win call once more at the close. Clear mechanism given and sustained: Sandhagen is called the more damaging striker, and the damage from elbows/knees/flying knees is expected to pile up as the fight goes on, ending in a cut stoppage. The one acknowledged risk (Font's jab and his ability to recover position quickly) is weighed and explicitly answered, not left as an unresolved hedge on the win.

Sandhagen is an unorthodox, high-volume, damaging striker: low hands and a wild, unorthodox footwork pattern that can get him backed up, but backed by brutal elbows, knees and even flying knees, a good lead-body-hook-into-leg-kick combination, and a recently expanding takedown game that can end a round quickly once he lands on top with elbows. The analyst calls him the more damaging striker in this fight and picks him by TKO via accumulated damage/cut.

The analyst states outright that he rates this at zero confidence on his own ranking scale, adding that if he had planned ahead he would not have wanted to make a pick at all -- the single strongest hedge on a win found anywhere on this card.

A good, unorthodox striker with a low-hands style that the analyst says lets him do unusual things (odd angles, a flying knee, a lead-hook-to-body-into-leg-kick sequence) but also lets better boxers land on him. His grappling is decent, with long limbs that help him climb to the back, though the analyst flags he is too submission-over-position-focused and can end up back on the bottom losing time there.

Three separate coinflip markers, any one of which would cap this grade. First, the side is named only because a pick is owed: he reaches it on the condition of having to "make a pick", and the assertion he then offers is that he merely "lean sand hagen" — a preference, not a claim. Second, he attaches stay-off advice to the bout twice over, telling viewers "don't bet on this one" and then saying of himself that he "would not place a bet" here. Third, the other corner is left a fully live route in his own voice: the man he picked against "could pull off the upset" and he "wouldn't be surprised" if it happened. The one supporting reason — that five-round and championship-level experience hands his pick "the edge" — is hedged twice inside a single sentence, with "i think" attached to both halves of it. Surrounding context pushes the same way rather than rescuing it: he says he has never worked a card leaving him this unsure of his picks, and frames the whole slate as one to watch rather than wager on.

138 MMA calls this a genuine toss-up and lands on Sandhagen only because the format demands a name. His framing is a range question: Sandhagen as the varied long-distance striker — hands, kicks, knees and elbows, with the flying knee singled out as the frightening look — against a boxing-first opponent who has to shut that distance down. The tiebreak he actually uses is not a skill at all but resume: Sandhagen's recent defeats came in competitive fights against champions and former champions, and five-round experience at that level is what he expects to decide a close bout. He is noticeably cooler on the rest of the package, rating the grappling as no more than adequate and locating Sandhagen's power in the legs and knees rather than the hands, where he gives the edge away. He advises staying off the fight entirely.