The former UFC Middleweight title contender, Paulo Costa recently had some issues with the promotion regarding his fighting payout and following all these, he got scheduled to face Marvin Vettori at the main event of UFC Vegas 41. Costa appeared on the fight week ridiculously overweighed and this fight got booked for Light Heavyweight.
Paulo Costa isn’t the only fighter who has faced weight issues, the former UFC Featherweight Champion, Jose Aldo is also one of them who had some serious weight cuts but he never showed up for a fight overweight, no matter how hard it got for him to make the weight.
Talking about Costa’s recent behavior disrespectful in MMA Fighting’s Portuguese-language podcast Trocação Franca, Jose Aldo says, “‘Dede’ (coach Andre Pederneiras) always told us that losing and winning is part of the fight, but our obligation was to make weight, if you don’t make weight, it’s lack of respect towards your opponent, the promotion, and the fans that are waiting for that.”
“That’s how I was raised, that’s what made me the athlete I am today. To me, it was disrespectful. Even if he’s Brazilian, if could be a friend of mine or anything like that, if you ask me, I’d still say the same thing.”
Jose Aldo continued, “The opponent goes through like two or three months preparing for a fight in one weight class, goes on a diet, gets to fight week and starts hearing rumblings that this guy won’t make weight or whatever and starts losing focus. You begin to think not only about your weight but if the actual fight is going to happen if the guy will make weight if he’s going up or going down.”
“Even if there’s a fine, even if he gives up, I don’t know, 50 percent of his contact to the opponent, it still disturbs him. It disturbs the fighter, disturbs the fans that are waiting, disturbs the journalists, disturbs everybody. You go to sleep with one situation and wake up in the morning and it has changed again, the fight is canceled, and then it’s confirmed again.” {H/T MMA Fighting}
Jose Aldo claims Paulo Costa has no right to demand more pay if he can’t even make weight
Paulo Costa faced a unanimous decision loss against Marvin Vettori at the main event of UFC Vegas 41 and this resulted in his second consecutive loss after being undefeated for 13 fights. Jose Aldo believes if he can’t make weight, Costa has no right to demand more payout for fights from UFC.
Aldo added, “If I were the promoter, I’d be very pissed, there’s no way you come talk to me tomorrow and ask for a pay raise if you can’t even fulfill your contract, right? I see that a lot these days. I see young fighters in the UFC that sometimes don’t fulfill what’s in their deals.”
“If you sign an eight-fight contract making X amount of money, man, you’ll make X during those eight fights, you can’t, after three fights… Or fight for the belt, get a title shot, and then you can say, ‘I deserve to make more because I’m doing this, this and this,’ and show the numbers.” {H/T MMA Fighting}
