On the night of June 2, the next numbered tournament UFC 302 will be held in Newark (USA), which will be headlined by the fight for the lightweight title between Islam Makhachev and Dustin Poirier. But the co-main event of the event is also very intriguing: the brilliant Brazilian Paulo Costa will reunite with former promotion champion Sean Strickland.
The most surprising thing here is how Kostya manages to get big fights with his background. Earlier in the year, Strickland lost the championship title to Drikus du Plessis in a very close fight and is now number one in the middleweight rankings. That is, Sean is, in fact, one step away from a new opportunity for the title. And it is logical to meet the conditional Jared Cannonier, who has already defeated Strickland and is well up, in fourth place. But Strickland surrenders to Costa even though Paulo lost to Robert Whittaker in February and is seventh in the standings. And there is a high probability that the winner of this fight will qualify for a fight with the champion.
Pablo Costa
Photo: Alex Goodlett/Getty Images
And it must be said that Kostya regularly manages to get his way, causing problems for the UFC. In the last five years alone, the Brazilian has turned down several big fights by simply turning them down. First, he withdrew from the fight with Robert Whittaker, then refused to fight Jared Cannonier, forced the postponement of the fight with Luke Rockhold, again did not accept the fight with Whittaker, then with Ikram Aliskerov, and finally left the UFC 294 tournament. in Abu Dhabi, where he was supposed to meet Khamzat Chimaev. And only in the last case was it a really good cause: staphylococcus.
Details about staphylococcus and its consequences:
Staphylococcus is a terrible disease for MMA fighters. Randleman died because of it, and now Costa has starred in
A series of very powerful reactions, including a loss to Marvin Vettori (October 2021), a victory over Rockhold (August 2022) and a failure in the fight with Whitaker, which was settled only on the third attempt. And all this time, Costa was among the top 7 in the rankings, one victory away from the title holder. He even managed to demand a duel with Du Plessis. And it is almost always the same scheme: they announce a fight, after a while Costa declares that he did not sign the contract and then the fight is canceled.
In 2021, Paulo avoided a fight with Cannonier under this scheme, stating that he was dissatisfied with the fee. The Brazilian also added that bloggers get more money, which infuriated Dana White: “he signed a contract and has obligations. If you want to be busy, he fights at least every weekend, because every weekend we have tournaments. If not, break the contract and do what you want. For example, start a YouTube channel. Besides, you can’t talk about a lot of money after his last performance. There are two options here: either you want to fight or you don’t. You should have started a YouTube channel at age 13, become a popular blogger, and then gotten into a fight over money last weekend. But you did not. You are not a blogger, you are a fighter and this is what you do. Maybe that’s not true, it’s up to him to decide. He come back and do something big.”
Dana Blanco
Photo: Carmen Mandato/Getty Images
Costa then returned to fight with Vettori, but already during the week of the fight he announced that he would not reach the middleweight limit and offered to fight in the light heavyweight category. Vettori accepted the fight and won. And early last year, Paulo stated that he would not fight Whittaker because he was not satisfied with the terms of the contract. And instead of applying sanctions to the fighter who forgot all the limits, the UFC gave a new agreement. Costa and his wife happily reported that not a single Brazilian who was not a champion received that money.
It seems that the time has come to return to battle. Paulo was “thrown” under newcomer Ikram Aliskerov at UFC 291, apparently wanting to punish the Brazilian fighter. And what is the result? Costa laughed on social media for a month and claimed that he had not seen any contract and would not fight Ikram. And so it happened, Kostya was given a new opponent – Chimaev. Then one might ask the question again: “How does this work?”
Even now, shortly before the fight with Strickland, it became known that Costa again delayed signing the contract. Sean reported it, but a week later the Brazilian reassured everyone: the fight was valid and everything was signed. It’s cool that Paulo still manages to be ironic about himself: he released a video hinting that he wanted to fight Strickland at catchweight, and in the week of the fight with Whittaker he joked that he still had time to film.
Costa is a charismatic boy who is active on social media and has built a good fan base. There’s trash talk, jokes about secret juices, and the theft of Merab Dvalishvili’s food. The altercations with Chimaev also became very bright touches for the promotion of the fight. Paulo knows how to attract attention and, apparently, this is the only thing that saves him from the wrath of the UFC management. Fans joke that Costa is Dana White’s illegitimate son; Otherwise, how else can you explain such loyalty to the promotion and such strange love from the boss?
Since August 2019, Costa has only one victory with three losses and six canceled fights. At the same time, Paulo occupies seventh place in the ranking and fights with the first number in the division. Also, he don’t forget about the improved contract. Who else has those privileges? Costa can rightly be considered the most arrogant fighter in the UFC. And they still expect fights from him, because they are almost never boring.
