Cory Sandhagen Describes Chito Vera Fight as a Psychedelic Experience

That was, in my opinion, one of the most technical and one of the finest performances in that division. That 135-pound division to have a guy like you and Marlin go after it like that, that was a fucking great fight. Thank you. Really great fight. And you're like on top of it right now, man. It's really exciting to watch. Yeah. I'm getting pretty good, you know? Yeah, for real. I've really been just plugging up some holes, figuring some stuff out. I feel like I'm at the part in the martial arts journey where I've gotten really good at being a really good learner. I can learn super fast and super efficiently now. And it's big time paying off. Not only that, but also the space I was in before that Cheeto fight was unlike one that I feel like I've ever been in in my life. How so? You know, have you read a decent amount of sports psych books? Yes. Where they'll sometimes talk about how you're almost having this out of body experience where you're almost like floating above the court or the field or whatever. It was almost like that, except I wouldn't use the word floating above. But I got to a space in that fight where I felt like all of the thoughts and all of the distracting things that sometimes happen in a fight were completely ignored. And this higher being, better version, like best no thinker, just actor was running the show. It's almost like I was watching the thing happen while I was in the fight. And there would be bits of me hopping in and being like, hey, throw this combination. Hey, take a little bit more of a risk. Hey, do this. And then that would get completely just watched. And this whoever was fighting that night that didn't even feel like me was the person that was fighting. It was fucking cool, man. Wow. It was cool, dude. It was like, you know, like a psychedelic experience feeling type of thing. It was cool. What do you attribute that to? How did you get to that mindset? It's a lot of, you know, messing stuff up. Like I remember the last time I was on was right after I had beaten Frankie. And I was in it's just a bunch of different parts of the journey. And in that part of the journey, I was really in this space where if I could make myself more war, if I can make myself more angry, if I can make make myself be up here, I would have success. That kind of stopped working a little bit after like around the TJ fight, and then kind of during the Yawn fight. And then definitely I tried to be that guy against song. And it was like too much of a distracting feeling where now my mindset's going into the last fight because it was such like a distracting feeling, just feeling like I have to get myself to a point of anger or upness before a fight where it just became distracting where it was helpful before it became distracting in that song fight. I bailed on that. And I just tried to be as mindful and as present as I possibly could for life. And I know that those are like kind of corny words now, but there is some real substance to them when they're like really done well. And I would say maybe about six weeks before the fight, I had this moment where I was sitting on the couch because I put a lot of pressure on myself and I want to be a world champ real bad where I was to the point where I wasn't enjoying any part of the camp, any part of the experience of fighting or anything. And I was sitting on the couch and I just like, I think I was crying a little bit and I was like, I can't fucking do this for the next five years of my life. You know, like I can't do this for the rest of my career. And I was like, well, what's got to change? And I was like, I got to lose, I got to take this pressure off of me and I got to start enjoying every day a lot more than I am right now. And from that, like six weeks before the fight, I started doing that. And I really think that that carried into the fight and it made me be a lot less tense, a lot less tight. And it made me be able to fight with just like a completely free way of being. Wow. Is this something that you had previously thought that you could get to that space or wanted to get to that space? Or is this something that you kind of experimented along the way and found this path? I'm a self learner. And I think that there's ways of being in life that you just kind of have to be at certain times. Like when you're a young kid, you have to be going and hitting it hard. You have to remember all of the hundreds of thousands of people on the other half of the world that are trying to accomplish the same goal as you. And you have to be a little bit, in my opinion, you have to be a little bit on the neurotic side of like, am I doing every single thing correct? Am I putting the right amount of pressure on me? That's totally a part of the journey, but I'm kind of more in the part of the journey where I've matured a lot as a fighter. I've matured a lot as a person. I'm getting married this year. Like I'm a little bit older. We're looking at kids probably in the next couple of years. And so I had to start thinking like, what's sustainable? Like what's like a sustainable way to continue doing what I love, but also becoming like a more mature adult. And that's just part of the journey that I'm in right now. I don't think that anything was wrong with the way that I was doing before, but it just is like a moving target all the time. So it's like you're just finding new ways to approach it and then realizing this way is better than the other way, even though the other way was effective. This is even more effective. So you're constantly trying to tweak it. Yeah. And I think that everything kind of has its purpose. In those times where I was really embracing this war mentality, this very bloodthirsty, vicious type of fighter that I was trying to be when I would go into the cage, that totally had its place because I had to experience what I thought that had to feel like in order for me to be the best martial artist that I can. Because I do feel like I've pointed all of my energy in my life and my mind and my spirit and everything towards the direction of being the best martial artist that I can be. And so going through that had its purpose, man. I had to figure out what it was like for me to be a vicious killer because in society that's not cool. Almost like the shadow self or whatever is the subconscious term for it. I had to experience that. I experienced it. I figured out that it was no longer serving me. It was being distracting. So what do I need to do now? Now it's like, okay, you figured that part out. You can be that guy whenever you want to be that guy, but now we're being present. Now we're enjoying it. And you don't really need to be that guy until you walk into the cage. And even when you do walk into the cage, you don't need to be this really dramatic, super emphasized, vicious guy. Be that guy, but you don't have to overdo it. And when you're learning something, I almost feel like you have to completely overdo it in order to learn where that cutoff is. Even in technique, if you could do an arm bar and win every single time with an arm bar, why would you ever stop doing arm bars? It'd be stupid. So you figure out how to do something, way overdo it, figure out where the cutoff is and be like, ah, okay, I can't do it in those situations. You pull back, you figure out what situations you need to do it in, and then you move forward. What was this? What happened? I lost... Can you hear me? My headphones cut out. Hold on. Check, check, check, check, check, check. Something happened over here, Jamie. I don't know what's going on, but I lost the headphones. We'll be right back, folks. Sorry about that. No, that's okay. So where were we at? So what was it about the other way you were approaching it? Where, you know, last time you were here, you had just embraced this idea that you went in there with the intention to fuck people up. What was distracting about that? It's like a hot burning flame. I feel like it's... I can only hold on to it for so long. I can't really... It's a lot of energy to be that up. And so when I would be in the back and warmed up, because you don't know exactly when you're going to walk, so I try to be ready 20 minutes before. It's been 30, 40 minutes warming up, trying to be that guy, and then for 20 minutes trying to sustain that guy. And that's like a long time to be that up. So even in this fight, because there's no preparing for that last hour before you go walk, like I don't care what type of guy you are or how zen you can be or how confident you are, that last hour before a fight, like your mind's going to fuck with you a lot. And it's going to go to you thinking that you're the God of the universe to you thinking that you're about to go get slaughtered. And in the back before, if I started to feel like I was having those impulsive thoughts of fear or you're about to go get slaughtered, I'd try to just cover that shit up real quick by getting real pissed. And that's a lot of energy to do. So before the Cheeto fight, I was super proud of the way that I was able to handle those feelings because those feelings are real as hell when you're in the back. How do you handle them? Well, I just watched them, man. I just realized, like, oh, okay, I'm having the sense of fear in me. And I would just kind of sit there and be like, okay, well, I'm not really fighting right now. So just let the fear be there. Right now your job is to get warmed up. And so I just took it, okay, right now I'm getting warmed up. Okay, they said 10 more minutes till we walk. Okay, I'm having the sense of fear still. That's okay. I'm still in the back. And then step by step by step, okay, I'm walking out now. Cool. Okay. Looking across from them. Okay. Touch gloves now we're fighting. It's literally just, it sounds super fucking simple, but it's just step by step by step, man. Just like, okay, I'm having that sense. I'll just watch that and not really, I mean, you acknowledge it, but you don't, I don't try to cover it up or I don't try to like be someone else. I just kind of watch it as if it was just someone else. It happened into someone else and then just move on. It doesn't sound super simple at all, but not to me at least. I know what you're saying and that feeling has got to be like riding a wild wave. Like you just got to maintain your balance and to watch you go into that fight, what was so impressive besides the fact that you're fighting a world-class guy in Marlon Vera and you were controlling the action was the overwhelming like the amount of information you were throwing at him. You were constantly changing levels, constantly threatening takedowns, constantly switching stances, and everything was, you know, there's fighters kind of sometimes they'll fall into a pattern and you can kind of predict that pattern. There was no pattern with you. It was all over the place and it was so overwhelming. When I was watching, I was like, Jesus Christ, like this is so high level. I mean for like a casual, I don't know if they're seeing that, but for someone who watches a lot of fights and has been around martial arts, you know, my whole life, when I was watching I was like, this is about as high level as it gets. You were mixing shit up so well, like the way you were choosing your attacks, whether it was the low kick or whether it was punches and the switch stance to punches, the shot, it was amazing, man. It was really fucking good. It was really fun to watch because it wasn't just that you were doing that, but you were doing that for five fucking rounds. Like you never varied, you never slowed down, there was never like breathers. It was just a full on assault of all of his reactions and all of his, his, you know, ability to read you. It was like attack, bang, hit there, okay, trying to settle, boom, this coming in. Another's a shot. It was like, there was no, there was no breaks. Yeah, it was pretty awesome, man. It was pretty fucking wild. Yeah, it was pretty wild. I think that that's always going to be one of my stronger points is that I can make decisions a lot faster than other people. I honestly think that that's what makes good people from great people because good people can do, they can make the right decisions and continue to make them, continue to make them, continue to make them. But at some point the person that's better at doing those things is going to surpass that person eventually. It might not happen early, you know, like it could take some time and against some of the best guys in the world it's going to take some time, but eventually your processing speed will out power theirs, you know, and I think that I do that really, really well. I think that my training has a lot to do with that too. What is different about your training? So all of the conditioning that I do or almost the conditioning parts that I take really seriously are the sparring days. I used to like hit mitts real hard and I still do like a strength and conditioning workout once a week. That's like, you know, 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 30 seconds, minute rest, you know, and stuff like that. But there's no getting tired like there is getting tired and sparring. So I'll do, if I usually do 10 week camps, the first week I just knock the rust off, you know, and then I do two seven weeks or two seven round weeks. So we spar Tuesday Fridays, I do seven rounds those days, and then the next two weeks I do eight rounds both of those days, and then I'll do like six and then the rest of them five because I want to get used to five. But in those seven round weeks and those eight round weeks, those are hard as fuck, man. Like I get like I try to get so tired where I'm just like, I can't, I don't feel like I can make decisions anymore. And I really think that having the concentration to focus for those 40 minutes makes it way easier for me to focus in the 25 minutes, you know, like it's, you know, I don't really know if that's science or not, but I definitely think that if I can stay focused for 40 minutes, 25 minutes will feel like nothing. So I really, really push myself there.