Paulo Costa has his heart set on settling an old feud with Khamzat Chimaev next if he’s able to beat Roman Kopylov in the co-main event of UFC 318 on Saturday night.
“If God gives me this victory, I will call his name,” Costa said on The Ariel Helwani show this week. “I’m going to call this son of a b*tch, motherf*cker for a fight. He needs to fight me. I need to fight him. I have tried to fight him for a long time, since we had a beef inside the PI.
“He has been avoiding fighting me for a long time. He always says no, and UFC has tried to put this matchup together for a long time, like two years ago. They said Chimaev said no, ‘he doesn’t want to fight you, he wants to fight anybody at 185, but he doesn’t want to fight you.'”
Truth be told, the two fighters career trajectories have gone in completely different directions in recent years, with Costa having lost four of his last five fights, while Khamzat remains undefeated and is set to fight for the middleweight title next.
However, Costa believes he can rediscover the form that led him to a title shot back in 2020 after a destructive five-fight winning streak.
“I just feel like I need a new refresh,” Costa said. “See different things and be connected with my old style, that style to chase, to be more aggressive, to bring back the Paulo of the old days since I fought my very first fights in the UFC, very aggressive. The fans and people around me always ask me to come back with this kind of style of fighting. So, yeah, I was looking for that, to bring back this style, and I think this is who I am.”