At one point in his career, Paulo Costa was widely regarded as a guaranteed future champion in the UFC but things went drastically downhill.
This coming Saturday, Paulo Costa returns to the Octagon when he takes on Roman Kopylov in the UFC 318 co-main event in Louisiana.
‘The Eraser’ hasn’t fought since June last year when he was handed a split decision loss against former middleweight champion Sean Strickland, suffering back-to-back defeats for the second time in his career.
The Brazilian will be hoping to return to the form that saw him granted a 185lb title shot against Israel Adesanya back in 2020.
Israel Adesanya made Paulo Costa pay in UFC title fight
After scoring five wins in a row, and beating the likes of Johny Hendricks and Yoel Romero, Costa was finally given his title shot against ‘The Last Stylebender’ at UFC 253.
Ahead of their clash, Costa was being credited with being the one with the best chance of dethroning Adesanya because of his athleticism and powerful striking arsenal.
The first round played out as an extremely tentative round between the two as they both attempted to find their range and get into the tempo of the fight.
In round two, though, Adesanya came out attacking the lead leg of the Brazilian and clearly got into his flow state with his striking.
And then with just over a minute left of the round, the champion caught Costa with a right straight and left hook, sinking him to the ground and subsequently finishing him with ground-and-pound.
Paulo Costa revealed he drank an entire bottle of wine the night before the fight
Considering ‘The Eraser’s’ exciting fight style, his performance was questioned by experts in the sport as he didn’t put up any sort of fight against ‘The Last Stylebender’.
However, following the fight, Costa revealed the reason for his lacklustre performance, claiming that he drank an entire bottle of wine the night before the fight.
“My weight cut was very hard, but it’s always hard. The problem is that in Abu Dhabi, the fight happens in the morning, not at night. So you get one night more (for recovery),” Costa explained to ESPN MMA.
“And what happened is, after my weight cut, I had recovered very well. But then I trained so hard. I was so confident, that I trained hard. I trained more than is recommended after a weight cut.
“And I think this made a lot of problems in my body. I had a lot of cramps and a lot of problems trying to sleep… I went to bed but couldn’t fall asleep. I tried melatonin, but it didn’t work. Sometimes I will use one cup of wine when I feel a lot of stress, it helped me a little bit… But it was too late, I was desperate to sleep,” Costa continued.
Ahead of Saturday night, Costa’s fans will be hoping that he doesn’t have struggle sleeping, otherwise the wine may come back out.