Paulo Costa must secure a victory this Saturday if he intends to issue a specific challenge.
The former middleweight title challenger will face Roman Kopylov this Saturday in the co-main event of UFC 318 in New Orleans. He enters the bout highly motivated. Besides being in a 1-4 slump, Costa is already focused on a potential fight with Khamzat Chimaev and understands that to get mic time after the fight, he first needs to emerge victorious.
“I very much want to fight [Chimaev],” Costa stated 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 said very bad things about me, messaging my girlfriend on Instagram, so this is completely personal.”
“I get angry just hearing his name, so we need to fight. We are young, we`re going to be in line, so I’m going to do my best on Saturday… I`m pretty sure I`m going to get the victory and I`m going to call him out, regardless of whether he wins or not. This fight will only not happen if he retires.”
Chimaev is currently slated to challenge middleweight champion Dricus du Plessis in the main event of UFC 319, scheduled for August 16 in Chicago. Across eight UFC appearances and 14 professional bouts overall, Chimaev has remained undefeated. This impressive run towards the title almost included a fight with Costa, but their October 21 clash at UFC 294 was called off due to an elbow infection suffered by Costa.
The animosity between the fighters has never waned, and Costa believes their potential showdown is more heated than ever, especially given the personal transgressions Costa attributes to Chimaev.
“Dirty things,” Costa described, referring to the mentioned DMs. “Like, ‘You should look for a better man,’ something like that. Not the kind of thing a real, confident man would do. Why did he message her? Why didn`t he message me instead of her? Coward. He is a coward.”
Costa faces a tough challenge against Kopylov, who is coming off two consecutive wins and has secured six victories in his last seven bouts. Despite Costa`s popularity, his in-cage performance has been underwhelming, with only one win since 2019 and just one knockout since 2018.
He did not offer a definitive prediction for the UFC 319 main event but suggested Chimaev might face difficulties if he fails to finish du Plessis early.
“It’s difficult to predict anything, but I believe Dricus is more robust,” Costa commented. “He can withstand Chimaev’s initial surge, ‘Gourmet Chen Chen,’ and then we never know how Chimaev can sustain his energy after the third round. I think that`s my main question.”
