Paulo Costa needs a win Saturday if hopes to make an important callout.
The one-time middleweight title challenger faces Roman Kopylov on Saturday in the co-main event of UFC 318 in New Orleans and he enters the bout with plenty of motivation. Not only is he mired in a 1-4 slump, Costa is already looking ahead to a fight with Khamzat Chimaev and he knows if he wants mic time afterward he has to have his hand raised first.
“I want to fight [Chimaev] very badly,” Costa said at Wednesday’s UFC 318 media day. “I want to hurt him. It doesn’t matter if he won that fight or not. It doesn’t matter. We need to fight. He talk very bad things about me, in my girl’s Instagram DMs, so this is totally personal.
“I feel angry just to hear his name, so we need to fight. We are young, we’re going to be on line, so I’m going to do my best Saturday. … I’m pretty sure I’m going to get the victory and I’m going to call his name, it doesn’t matter whether he wins or not. This fight just will not happen if he retires.”
Chimaev is currently set to challenge middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis in the main event of UFC 319 on Aug. 16 in Chicago. In eight UFC appearances and 14 pro bouts overall, Chimaev has never lost. That run to the title almost included a bout with Costa, but an Oct. 21 clash at UFC 294 was cancelled due to Costa having an elbow infection.
The bad blood has never subsided and Costa feels the matchup has more heat than ever, especially with the personal transgressions Costa alleges Chimaev has committed.
“Dirty things,” Costa said, describing the aforementioned DMs. “Like, ‘You should look for a better man,’ something like that. Not the kind of things a real man, confident man would do. Why he message her? Why he didn’t message me instead of her? Coward. He is a coward.”
Costa has a tall task ahead of him in Kopylov, who is coming off of back-to-back wins and has won six of his past seven overall. Despite Costa’s popularity, his in-cage results have left something to be desired as he has just one win since 2019 and has only scored one knockout since 2018.
He didn’t commit to a pick for the UFC 319 main event, but thinks Chimaev could be in for a hard time if he doesn’t finish du Plessis early.
“It’s hard to predict something, but I think Dricus is more solid,” Costa said. “He can resist the very first rush from Chimaev, ‘Gourmet Chen Chen,’ and then we never know after the third round how Chimaev can maintain, sustain his energy. I think this is my question.”
