Fucking Paulo Costa, man. I mean [extremely Tony Soprano voice], the freaking bawls on this guy.
Here we are, on Wednesday of fight week, and the former middleweight title contender gets up there in front of god and the MMA media to say, you know what? He’s not going to make 185 pounds for Saturday’s main event bout against Marvin Vettori. Not even gonna get close, honestly. So, uh, maybe we can work out some other arrangement?
“I think this fight will happen,” Costa told reporters at today’s media day. “It just will not happen if (Vettori) don’t want to fight me. Maybe we can do a catchweight, 195 [pounds], maybe.”
Costa would go on to say that his current weight is around 211 pounds – which, hey, if he were fighting at light heavyweight that’d be pretty damn good for two days before weigh-ins – and it was his understanding that, after a talk between his manager and Vettori’s, it is now no longer “on the schedule” to fight at 185 pounds.
So yeah, two things come to mind right away here. The first is: Hey what the fuck, Paulo? You’ve known about this fight since at least early August, since that’s when it was announced. That means you had around two and a half months, minimum, to plan for it. Then you’re gonna show up on fight week and act like the friend who is trying to convince everyone to ditch the diet we all agreed to and just order a pizza instead?
My dude, does that seem to you like the best possible move, image rehabilitation-wise, for your first bout since admitting that you went into a UFC title fight with a goddamn wine hangover? Because it seems to me like the kind of thing you’d only do if you wanted to make sure we all think of you as a permanent fuck-up.
But then there’s this other thought. What if our guy “Snacks” here has actually cracked the code? What if this is the best possible way to totally mess up a weight cut, by casually admitting it’s not going to happen days in advance, and then putting it all on the other guy to accept that?
Think about what we know of the MMA news cycle. If you roll in Friday morning and miss weight by a Christmas ham that’ll pretty much dominate the headlines until fight time. Everyone’s mad at you, wondering if you’ve put the whole fight in jeopardy, and basically assuming that you must not have your shit even a little bit together.
But if you tell us on Wednesday that the “schedule” has changed? Whether that’s true or not, we have a couple days to get over it and shift our focus over to the other dude, looking at him like, are we or are we not gonna go in there fat and stupid and show these fans a good time? Then if he won’t accept the fight under these new terms, somehow he’s the one who ends up looking like an asshole. And on a fight card like this, damn, we really can’t afford to lose a halfway decent headliner.
It also allows Costa to basically make a preemptive health and wellness argument. We’re always complaining about drastic weight cuts and the scary results, right? Well, here’s a guy saying he won’t even attempt it, so let’s make some other kind of deal instead. What are we really going to do then, tell him to get his puffy ass in the sauna and don’t come back until he’s lost 25 pounds in 48 hours? Only if we want to sound like a bunch of hypocrites.
Course, the sticklers in the audience will still helpfully remind him that he agreed to this weight, that this is in fact the division he fights in, the division in which he ostensibly hopes to one day get another title shot. But that’s just details, man. Because if you look deep within your soul and interrogate what you know about this sport and its fans, you’ll be forced to admit that there’s a whole lot of people out there who could absolutely be won over by a guy like Costa basically saying he could give us a much more entertaining slobberknocker if only we agree to let him roll in there a little jiggly.
And Paulo? He had the genius idea to start making the case early. To throw it out there mid-week and give us some time to sit with it. Then he presumably headed back to the hotel room, opened up that room service menu, and with a mischievous smile called down and ordered all of page two.
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