Bautista shrugs off UFC's submission clip as Sandhagen rematch at UFC 329 looms

Mario Bautista had a wry reaction when the UFC tagged him in a highlight clip this week — footage of him being submitted by Cory Sandhagen in the first round of his octagon debut more than six years ago. The 33-year-old bantamweight faces Sandhagen again at UFC 329, and the social media reminder did little to rattle him.

“I clicked on it and it’s me getting submitted by him,” Bautista told MMA Fighting. “One, I’m like why would you tag me in this? Two, when I look at it, I was so young and inexperienced. There’s not really much to take away from it. I think it’s going to be completely different this second go round.”

The backstory to that first meeting underlines just how much has changed. Bautista accepted the fight on roughly a week’s notice as a 6-0 prospect, receiving the call from his manager on a Friday night just as he was about to sit down to a bowl of spaghetti. He flew to New York, stepped into the octagon for the first time, and was submitted by an armbar in round one — the only loss of his career at that point.

Since then, Bautista has gone 9-1 over his last ten fights and climbed into the bantamweight top ten, accumulating more UFC appearances than he had professional bouts before signing with the promotion.

“Six fights outside the UFC and now I’ve had more fights in the UFC than out,” he said. “I have so much experience with big fights. I feel like it’s a lot different leading into this one.”

Bautista is candid about the limited tactical value of revisiting that debut. With so much time elapsed and both fighters having evolved significantly, he sees little point in dissecting what went wrong in 2018 or 2019. The one tangible detail he carries forward is a physical memory of Sandhagen’s grappling style.

“I remember grappling him and him being almost like a gummy kind of feel — good leverage, good hips,” Bautista recalled. “I don’t look back at it and think what can I do differently this time. It’s just been so much time in between and so much growth within myself as far as skills and mentally and being prepared for those big moments.”

He acknowledged that Sandhagen will also have improved, but believes his own development has been the more dramatic of the two. For Bautista, UFC 329 is less a rematch than a first meeting between two fighters who happen to share a brief, lopsided history.