Paulo Costa’s career in the UFC has been full of its ups and downs and his relationship with Dana White has evolved since the beginning.
This coming Saturday, Paulo Costa returns to the Octagon for the first time since his loss to Sean Strickland last June at UFC 302, when he takes on Roman Kopylov.
Ahead of his return to action, the Brazilian is already looking ahead to his potential next fight, outlining which fighter he wants to fight on the UFC’s rumoured event at the White House next year.
However, before he can consider fighting on potentially the biggest MMA event ever, he must get through the tricky test that Kopylov will present.
Costa explains why he didn’t like Dana White at the beginning of his UFC career
‘The Eraser’s’ UFC career has been full of ups and downs, and after impressing with his first five outings, he was granted a middleweight title shot against Israel Adesanya in 2020.
Despite that, he ruined the biggest fight of his career after he drank a bottle of wine the night before his fight, subsequently putting on one of his career worst performances.
Ahead of his fight in Louisiana, Costa has explained why he didn’t like UFC boss Dana White during the beginning of his tenure in the promotion.
“I support Dana White, right now. Back in the day I wasn’t supporting him. Back in the day we had some beef, not that he really did bad things to me but I was a little bit sad and mad. The first six fights on my contract were horrible, I was getting paid unfairly,” Costa told Ariel Helwani.
“I tried to talk to them, I was very honest I said, ‘Guys, come on this is very unfair.’ This is not fair just because of a bad decision in the past,” he continued.
Paulo Costa could re-enter the middleweight title conversation
Despite having suffered back-to-back losses, Costa could re-enter the middleweight title conversation with an impressive win over the Russian this Saturday.
At UFC 319, Dricus Du Plessis is set to defend his title against Khamzat Chimaev and Costa is hopeful ‘Borz’ wins the title so that they can re-book their previously scheduled fight.
However, the Brazilian striker will likely need to score another win and build some more momentum if he beats Kopylov.